Miss Independent

My grandmother frequently comments to me that I have chosen to follow an unusual path… but somehow managed to come out all right in the end. Yeah, I didn’t follow the formula. I left college, went back to college, went to England, worked for a bunch of crazy museums and non-profits, haven’t gotten married or had kids, don’t know if I want to… or if I don’t want to… but yeah… my personal drumbeat is off rhythm from the main. It isn’t too straining on the nerves to observe or hear. I figured it out… how to make life work, in my own unique, perhaps bizarre, way.

I go against the grain a lot. Not just because I picked a less frequently traveled life path (although, really, how many people stick to the straight and narrow). I don’t like sports. Well, I don’t like major league sports. I simply can’t and won’t get excited about the Red Sox and the Patriots and the Celtics. I don’t care … except that I do care about how evil some of it is. Yeah, I know, I’m odd. Or maybe just contrary. Or maybe I just don’t get it.

No. I get it. I do understand that there are a lot of things in pop culture that make people very happy. I just made a conscious choice to disengage myself. Sometimes I have a crazy moralistic rant… but… mostly… I simply have other things that delight my fancy more. Like Shakespeare. Neglected history like Beauport. England. Writing. My family. Cooking. If I was awarded an extra amount of time and money, I would pursue those things more. And let me be clear… it is because those things excite ME. They make me want to learn more, to push myself, to challenge my observations. My choice to tune out the Sox or American Idol or Project Runway isn’t an indictment of the people who do like them. I just find those things… well, boring.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some things I like that are very popular. I recently jumped on the Dr. Who bandwagon and boy… it makes me very happy. I snap up tickets to Coldplay the second I can. I am, in spite of my anti-materialism, anti-commercialism… a sucker for a good pair of black shoes. I do follow the crowd when I choose to… when it makes my individual happy. But when I follow the crowd and ooh and ahh over the new Starbucks drink or take the next Facebook quiz… I eventually stop myself and question my motivation. I do, believe it or not, think about why I am a sheep. Sometimes I keep grazing in the pasture. And sometimes I leap over that fence so fast and furious I don’t care how hard I fall. Just so long as I get out.

So here’s my point, people. I think. I think a lot. Almost too much. And when I think, I turn things inside and out, backwards and forward... in my own head. Maybe I’m patting myself on the back when I say this… but I think of my grandmother’s frequent, but always unsolicited, comment on my choices. Of the many times someone has said that I have an unusual way of looking at things. Granted, that is often met with a look of befuddlement or… well, let’s face it, disdain. But clearly, folks, I’m not thinking to please the crowd. I stand on my own. Maybe it’s in my own little world. But it’s mine. It’s me. I survive and manage to get through… and be independent.

Wh-what? Oh no… she’s bringing up politics again. Yeah, well, sorta. It’s more… an argument of semantics and a slight, well, okay… a bit of a Leonine flustering at having the voting public imply that I’m not an independent thinker… because I voted the way I did.

One definition of independent is “thinking or acting for oneself.” Maybe it has made me selfish. I can say, without question, it has made me lonely. And there are times, sure, when I would like to join the masses and make life easier on myself and not constantly question the way things are. But… I can’t. It isn’t in my nature. I did that for a couple years… and that silent acceptance caught up with me… in a really bad, depressing way.

I’m NOT saying that the other side is wrong for deciding themselves independent. I’m just pissed that the other side decides they have ownership of that adjective. That my wandering off the path isn’t independence, but elitism. Fuck that. I’ve earned the word independent with a LOT of tears, a huge amount of contemplation… and seriously, a whole hell of a lot of heartbreak.

Now I just applied the word to myself, so I’m not going to deny someone else that privilege if that’s what they truly believe with a whole heart about their vision of the world. But… don’t you dare take it away from me.