I’m in Italy. My grandfather was born here just a few miles away yet I, in all my pale English pomp, am effectively an alien cast in amongst foreign people in a foreign land. However much at home I might feel is this my home? However beautiful the beauty is, in a sense, borrowed and soon I will need to give it back. However much I identify with and find comfort in my roots I am still an alien.
From an early age we gravitate toward group identity and a sense of belonging. Our desire to be connected became confused somewhere and morphed into wanting to be essentially the same. We are not the same. We are thinly joined but we are not the same.
Our identity is not an issue we consider in many of the places we find ourselves each day. At work we have an identity constructed from the role we play and the expectation of us with which we are familiar. At home we have an identity as a parent or as a partner. At play we have an identity in this group of friends or in that one. In all of these places we are connected but we are also adrift. We are not the same.
We want to fit in and we need to fit in. Rarely will we find ourselves happy to risk exclusion in order to be true to something which stirs in us but can be easily pushed down, the power of connection seemingly so much stronger than our desire to look at ourselves deeply and honestly, staring so hard that we reach the point where our features are familiar but unfamiliar, where we seem to be us but we somehow aren’t. This is perhaps the constant tension between belonging and knowing that there is a way in which we do not.
The process of developing true self awareness is more than tricky and those that walk in its direction are hardy, courageous, inquisitive, somehow dissatisfied and sparklingly human. Perhaps one of the most disturbing realisations is that of our own uniqueness, the dawning that we are truly exceptional, truly originals and, however much we yearn to be like one another, we never can be, not really. We live together but we are not together. This is not being alone, this is being alien and our willingness to see it as a gift is challenging.
I once worked with a young man whose desperation to be other than alien was so strong you could touch it. He felt he had missed out on a life that was lived by countless others played out every day on Facebook and spoken about by friends he wanted to have but felt he never truly caught. It was as if in some sense he had found himself deposited into a parallel universe where he was forced to live out some sort of half life whilst he peered through the glass at the one he really craved, full of connection, familiarity, and comfort. He was like a paving stone whose edge had been driven upwards by the constant trample of feet and the hard rains slipping between the cracks which made ground uneven beneath him creating a feeling that he could never really fit snugly, never belong so he lived in fear of never knowing peace. He had many skills and talents, many aspects of himself that were more than precious but he could not see them, he would not see them and even less so when they were pointed out to him and drawn as clearly as words on a page. In his anxiety to avoid being alien he became more alien than he felt he could bear.
None of us are immune to falling foul of being alien. I know I spent many years desperately trying to be someone else because of a dread that who I really was meant falling to earth like an alien and being seen as such by everyone who encountered me. However different or the same I looked, talked, laughed or thought I would be found out and when I was the game would be up and I would be at best alone and at worst destroyed. Then I came to understand that we are all aliens, but many of us don’t realise it and many of those that do just can’t bear to look.
I could be meticulous in covering up my truths reluctant to be wholly me believing that to be completely incompatible with any sort of acceptance and love. This is futile because the more energy we expend trying to morph into something acceptable to everyone else the more repugnant we become to ourselves.
Our real challenge then is not to avoid feeling alien but to relish it, to rejoice in our singular beauty knowing that it emanates from us only and can never be replicated by anyone anywhere however unlikely it might seem. Our invitation is to stop needing to be connected at as many points as possible and realise that to be together does not mean to be joined, to be harmonious is not to be one. The notes played in the most touching of chords come together to create beauty but they are all singular and it is that which makes them special. Alone they seem unremarkable and together exceptional, but it is the unrealised strength of each on their own that gives the opportunity to be so extraordinary when combined. We are like this, aliens that are like the most precious of jewels and remain remarkable either alone simply held in the hand or united in a magnificent collection of sparkling colour.
We are all on this world but the world does not define us, we all have a physical body but we are so much more than it, we experience our lives in a constant series and stream of “things which happen” but we are not these either. We have feelings and emotions which seem to strike at the very heart of us but even this is not who we are. Deep down, further down than many of us ever look we are so much more than all of these parts and pieces, we are so different it is all at once a wonder that we connect in any way but at the same time no wonder at all that we do, so incredible is the variety that we all personally bring to each of our days and so alluring and heady the influence we can have on one another if only we will let it be so.
If you ever fear yourself odd, strange, an outsider, misunderstood, a freak, nuts, broken, too sensitive, too hard, too much, not enough, put on a pedestal, pulled off a pedestal, genius, fool, maverick, then know that these are only descriptions that we use for aliens. Know too that what you are noticing is that you are not the same but that none of us are. This is not reason to worry it is certainty that you are alive. You are alien and you are more special and valuable than I can say.
The sun is falling down into the lake, there are Italian voices echoing across the warm early evening air and crickets chirping in the grass down below. Sitting here I am aware of my solitude and my unending connection. Everything is strange and familiar. I am truly an alien and it’s quite wonderful.
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