Not Your Average Lawyer

A friend dropped in on me unexpectedly tonight. I delight in this friend and the conversations that we have, unexpectedly and with very open minds and hearts. She found me searching the internet and wanted to know what I was doing and why! She knows I’m an internet junkie but is amazed at how much time I can spend plugged in.

Our short conversation sparked a ton of blog subjects. Not the least of which was related to why I was surfing the internet (someone has plagiarised a poem that I wrote as a teenager and I was trying to track down the poetry thief to learn more about them – that will be the subject of another blog).

But the one topic that drove me to this entry was about a young teenager that she knows. He is trying to re-define his life in his current environment. He has consciously made a decision to be a different person that he has been over the past years. The choices that he is making will reap him much abundance and happiness in the coming years. At some intellectual level he knows that, because he is very smart. At some other, deeper and more touch-sensitive level, it hurts indescribably much.

He no longer wants to be what he once was; the skin doesn’t fit. But he hasn’t yet found his place in his new tribe. The old tribe wants him back. He doesn’t want to go back there. The new tribe hasn’t recognized him as one of them. He hasn’t yet figured out the approach that will get him from one trapeze to the other. He is in the middle place; scary, stressful, lonely, empty. The chrysalis span.

The story tugged at my life. I remember being in high school and hanging out with the very bad crowd. Of course, bad in those days was relative. It was all about smoking on school property, skipping classes, drinking at the dances, snubbing your nose at anything that had a *tomorrow* label on it. All very tame in comparison to today. But, relative or not, it was bad enough in those days that I know my Mom despaired over what I would make of myself.

At some point I came to a flash point. I don’t remember the point. I only remember the change and how awful it was and how I felt that I no longer had a place in the world. I decided that I would drop the “bad crowd”, that I would study harder, that I would not cut classes, that I would not sneer at the rest of the world in its attempts to define success. All well and good.

Except I no longer had a place, a belonging, a community, a network, a tribe, a gang. I was all alone. I was no longer one of “them” and I was not yet one of “those”. I was alone and I was lonely. For years there were weekends where I would get home on a Friday night and not leave my place until Monday morning, and I hadn’t spoken to a single soul in the period of time.

As I was recalling all of this for my friend, the feelings that I felt back then, some thirty five years ago, came back through the quiver in my voice. I remember so well the years where I believed that I never quite fit in.

Where you were you, and I was me, and there was no us.

Life cannot be more forlorn.

I wanted to tell her young teenage friend: Have hope. This will define you. Your decisions will mark your future, where you alone will determine how – and with whom – you want to spend your days and your energy. From a weekend with no voices, to an address book with over five hundred people who would spend time merely because of who you are, and not which group you belong to (or whether you have excelled at Facebook-friend-delusions).

This is the journey I have travelled. It will be yours. Stay the course.

The time of being between trapezes is well known to change management advocates. I prefer the analogy of Linus-with-his-blanket-in-the-dryer. For sure we know the security is gone. What we don’t know is: Will it ever be the same? Will it be different? Will it be better? But most pressing of all: How can I cope with this feeling of nothingness in the meantime?

Most of all, I wanted to tell her young teenage friend that I too have travelled that lonesome road. Having come the distance, I can promise you this. You have made the right choices. At some point you will look back at this time and find that, in the place to which you have now travelled, you may sometimes be alone but you will never be lonely. You will find your tribe, your group, your gang, your community, your role.

And you will have done that because you stayed true to yourself.

Travel well, my young friend. I am on the path in front of you. I am cheering you on.