I know where I belong
I have often felt like an outsider, a little unmoored from the people around me, including my family. I’ve attributed some of this feeling to my adoption story, having been given up by my birth father as a toddler, but it probably doesn’t explain everything. My family also relocated frequently during my childhood. I ultimately moved every two years until eighth grade. I typically had a few friends but never what I would call a genuine friend group until my teens.
In third grade, the second of five schools I attended before high school, my school experimented with combining third and fourth grade students into color-coded groups. Each age cohort was divided in half academically, and each group moved through different teachers for different subjects. Red and Yellow for third graders, Blue and Green for fourth graders — with a few exceptions.
John Guinn, Charlie Heckel, and I were third graders in Green. We started out in Yellow, but I guess they thought we needed to be more challenged, so they moved us to Blue. That didn’t last long though, three precocious third graders with the bottom half of fourth graders. Within a day or two, we were moved again.
By the end of the year, having essentially completed fourth grade, they told us we’d be moving on to fifth grade. But my family moved that summer, and my new school explained to my parents that they did things differently in Virginia, so I was placed in a fourth-grade class. After a few weeks, however, I was called to the principal’s office where they had my mother on the phone from work. She explained that they wanted to move me to fifth grade. She asked, What did I think? I said, Sure.
That same day I collected my things, and they walked me down the hall to fifth grade. Asked to make new friends again, I did. Adam Labar and Judson Nierle took me in. Then in sixth grade, we moved again. In seventh, I started middle school. And then in eighth, we moved one more time.
If you feel like an outsider, you tend to observe things a lot more. — Anderson Cooper
Each move required a bit of shape shifting. Any accent I might have had from the last place I lived dissolved into something that couldn’t really be identified. I also learned never to tell anyone how old I was. It’s hard enough being the new kid without also having to explain that the reason you’re a year younger than everyone else and can’t write in cursive is because you skipped a whole year of school. I eventually learned how to sit it in the background and watch for a while until I felt safe. And I also learned that without the deep roots that only come with time, I’d always feel on the periphery of any group.
I have spent much of my life, at least into my thirties and forties, searching for a feeling that I’m fully at home — a physical home, a geographic home, a spiritual home, a professional home, a political home. In high school, I tended to gravitate toward other kids who had also been transplanted from other places. More likely Catholics than Baptists. There weren’t Jews in my neighborhood. Frustrating my parents, I gave up white bread, Coca-Cola, and eventually meat. I went to New England for college and decided to stay in the Northeast after graduation. I spent a couple years in the Unitarian Church with other disaffected Protestants, Jews, and atheists. In my search for belonging, I helped launch a community newspaper with a diverse group of neighbors. With another group of friends, we spent the better part of a year putting together a two-day symposium on architecture and urbanism, Archifest, bringing speakers from around the country. Then I met my wife and ultimately followed her to New York. We’ve been here ever since.
This search for my own values and belief system has often left me feeling further isolated from my family. Once my family moved to the South, I think they felt like they found their home. I was in eighth grade when we moved to Stone Mountain, but my brother was just in fourth, so he ended up having much more of his education and upbringing in one place. He eventually went to Auburn for college. My family became Country music fans. And while my parents eventually divorced, they both ended up staying in the Southeast. And their politics moved in the direction of the region they called home. As did mine. As the country became more polarized, this divide couldn’t help but seep into my relationships.
And it wasn’t just my family. It turns out my entire generation helped push Trump to victory by a margin of +10 points. Men in my age bracket supported Trump over Harris by a resounding margin of +22 points, 60% to 38%. Some credit our coming of age during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, suggesting we’re looking for a certain kind of masculine leadership. Others credit our inherent toughness, our independent latch key childhoods, as an explanation for the appeal of Trump’s brash words and behavior to our generation.
When your peers are moving in one direction, and you’re moving in the other, it’s easy to question your own compass. Many of my male Gen X friends feel similarly. My closest friend from high school, who is still in the South, asked me recently, “Am I wrong?” It was a rhetorical question but one subtly laced with self-doubt.
From Hillary Clinton’s comment describing half of Donald Trump’s supporters as fitting into a “basket of deplorables” to Biden’s clumsy gaffe implying that Trump’s rhetoric or his supporters — or both — are “garbage,” vilifying the other side is a death trap for Democrats. For Republicans, however, it’s been political gold. From Trump mocking a disabled reporter to Marjorie Taylor Greene calling for the execution of prominent Democrats, they’re simply better bullies. Libtard, snowflake, cuck, beta, and so many other labels have entered the mainstream because of Republican smears against Democrats, as individuals and a group. Never mind that Biden’s comment was in response to Tony Hinchcliffe’s disgusting joke at the infamous MSG rally. There’s no low road that’s safe for Democrats. Even Bill Maher called out Democrats as “brats [and] snobs.” My mother relayed this observation to me, which I took as a not-so-subtle implication that I must be one or the other.
Mass deportations. Mass firings of government employees. Mass retribution. During a period of Republican control of state government in New York, a political appointee responsible for the MTA told my boss at the time, “It’s our turn now.” Team Trump is angry and looking for revenge.
Voting for a racist or a fascist or a misogynist may not make you one, but it’s awfully hard for me to look the other way. I don’t agree with everything AOC or Bernie Sanders says, but I know they are good people. I believe in their patriotism. I believe in their respect for other people and their constituents. It’s difficult to say the same about Donald Trump or Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson or Stephen Miller.
On his podcast after the election, former Republican strategist turned political Independent, Tim Miller lamented that all “the worst people are happy.” They believe their worldview has been validated, while the best people are disappointed, uncertain, and scared. He’s not suggesting that all Trump voters are the worst people, but he does believe that Trump is the preferred candidate of the worst people. In my own search for a place where I belong, I tend to look around me for the people I respect and admire. And in this political context, when I look around, it’s not hard to see where I feel most comfortable.
We saw Jack Antonoff perform with his band Bleachers recently at Madison Square Garden. After a 10-minute countdown clock, the show opens with I Am Right on Time. Antonoff’s message is about living in the present. The future’s past, I’m right on time. Antonoff lost his younger sister as a teen, and his life has been defined by a certain kind of grief that he admits can be overwhelming. It’s the conundrum of time. You can’t live anywhere else but the present. And you can’t be late, if you understand that this is where you’re supposed to be.
“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” — David Bowie
As I’ve struggled over the course of my life to come to terms with who I am and who I was meant to be, to reconcile how I feel about who I am with who others might want me to be, I’ve grown more and more comfortable with being — and becoming — myself. This conception of time is just another way to think about this evolution. I want to confront life directly, in the present, for what it actually is, not what I wish it were. My differences with my family or my Facebook friends or my Gen X peers aren’t anything for me to hide.
I’m gonna live my truth in this life
I am not gonna live a lie
’Cause I came here to be alive
I am here to be human
I’m gonna keep my head to the sky
Gonna walk each step with pride
’Cause I came here to be alive
I am here to be human
— Lenny Kravitz, Human
If anyone thinks I’m a brat or a snob, perhaps I’m not doing a good enough job living my values. Perhaps none of us is. The woke movement, for instance, is fundamentally about respect. The #MeToo movement is fundamentally about accountability. But perhaps the tactics went too far. Perhaps these movements became more about form over substance. Isn’t there room to discuss the appropriateness of hormone treatments and puberty blockers for children managing gender dysphoria? And even if the allegations against Al Franken had all been true, were they significant enough to have forced his resignation from Congress? Democrats have a tendency to destroy their own.
Perhaps, depending upon the offense, we should be demanding remorse and contrition from people instead of a pound of flesh. Perhaps we should set aside self-righteous indignation and practice forgiveness. Isn’t that what it means to be human?
While I ponder these existential questions, Trump’s win is not going to shake my core beliefs. Hate can’t win. Greed isn’t good. Words do matter. Karma is a bitch. I’m not retreating to the shadows. I know who I am. I know where I belong. I know what I believe.
