Fitting In.

Do people have an innate desire to fit in? Be trendy? Follow the crowd? Just seeing how people act leads me to think so. Yet I want to claim myself the example, set myself apart. How self loving.

Ordinarily I attribute it to my risque junior high days where I just kind of... for lack of better wording... was a popular kid. I was on the in crowd and either intentionally or subconciously did all the things that everyone else. The self loving side of me would say other people did what I did, but I'll leave that one open for debate. All in all, I was part of the crowd one way or another.

Then I get to high school. Perhaps partly because I'm displaced or I begin to realize the important of looking long run, I just stop caring about the crowd, about the mob, about those cool kids. I actually found it frustating and kind of retarded whenever people would ask me if I knew so and so guy or such and such girl.

I think that attitude kind of continued into college. I didn't care to be cool. I just wanted to do my own thing and for the most part I think I did.

I honestly don't think I'll ever fully grow out of that mindset, wanting to be set apart from them all.

But recently, I've begun to wonder if that's the best route to take. To put in a short disclaimer, there are no absolutes. You don't have to either follow all the time or not follow all the time. In reality, you pick and chose what factors matter most to you. But for the sake of making this rant simple, let's deal in absolutes. And yes, I sense a lot of Star Wars references coming.

Moving on, I do business development. Part of my job is networking and building those relationships. I can justify that as part of the job on the external side, but part of me still feels like a company should be judged on the merit of what it is doing, not how likable the people are. I wonder if it has to deal with the lack of perfect information.

On the internal side, it's kind of tiring. That would be a whole different discussion for another time.

But the more and more I think about it I wonder if my state of thinking has to do with growing up in a Christian family. Perhaps at that young of a age I never really considered it, but there is this whole calling to set yourself apart from the rest of the world. Once again, it's obviously not in absolutes and interpreting it so leads to bad results, but for the sake of simplicity let's leave it at that. Just a curious thought that got my interest as I was having lunch by myself.