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A Letter to a Friend About Being Weird

This Rant I Went on Got out of Hand

By Anthony JohnsonPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Warped Tour 2018, gathering of the weird kids.

So there’s is a small bit of pretext I would like to give to this “letter.”

I was on the phone with a good friend of mine and we got on the conversation of being weird. She’s weird, I’m weird, it’s awesome and a good thing. She asked me to explain what I meant when I said that being weird is a good thing. I proceeded to go on a rant for about a half hour. After I was done, she told me I needed to write it down and share it with people. So here you are, a letter to my friend about being weird.

We have different mentalities. I think you see everything as black and white, a straight line that you won’t deviate from. And that’s awesome because it works for you, you have great success following that line and seeing things the way you do. I like to think I see the grey in it all sometimes. And I’ve lived a very different life, I’ve been down and up a lot of times, so it gave me a different perspective. So we have a huge difference in the way we go about life. Yet we get along and have an awesome friendship. It’s weird, we are weird. But all the best people are. Hell that’s what makes people who they are, the fact that they have different mentalities and are weird.

Think about what we were told as kids, “you can be whoever you want, you are one of a kind.”

But then we get stuck on this whole stupid concept of being normal, always trying to fit in to this distorted view of normalcy that we see on TV and read about in magazines. Why not be weird? You have one shot at this thing we call life. We don’t know what happens after you die for sure, we know we have this one shot. If you are lucky you have a solid 80-100 years in you barring unforeseen circumstances, but that time could stop tomorrow, or today, or next week. You never can pause or rewind, you just keep on living your one chance. And some of us spend that whole time trying to reach this distorted goal of what we think society expects of us or what we are supposed to do with our time here.

But then there are the weird people. The dreamers, the thinkers, the lovers, the creators, and so much more. The people that go outside the norm. They pursue their dreams and goals so they can be happy. Not to compare their life to someone else’s, but to reach their best self and their best life. Weird is what we are supposed to be. We are supposed to be different from one another but instead we ridicule and try to hinder it because we are afraid of what we don’t understand. We think that these people somehow threaten us.

Knowing the concept that everyone around you could be going through stress, worry, pain, fear, a terrible boss, a stressful relationship or many more things, that’s when I think you truly break through the barrier. When you can look at someone and see them as a human being, not just some extra in your own movie, that’s when I feel that you truly understand patience and kindness. You truly understand what is going on. We are all animals trying to survive in this messed up world. Weird people understand this concept, I think. Being unique in a world that is always trying to change you is so hard, and they are bound to live a crazy life because not everyone understands it. Not everyone understands your relentless pursuit of education, not everyone understand me working at a doggy day care when I have the skills to get a 20 dollar an hour paying job.

We pursue what makes us happy. It isn’t about what the person next to us is doing, because this is our life. Just us. Yeah other people can be along for the ride. Just like we are along for their ride. But you can’t live your life trying to match someone else because on your death bed or in your last few minutes of life you aren’t going to think about whether you made your family happy, or your spouse happy, or your boss. You are going to look at your life and you are going to be sad and regretful, or you are going to realize how lucky you were to experience what you did. You are going to savor your most precious moments. And maybe that will be with your spouse, or your coworkers, or any number of people. I’m not saying that you should disregard those, I’m just saying that it comes down to it, you will look at your life. Not theirs. So be weird, go throw paint at a wall in your house, spend your nights writing music instead of sleeping, practice that guitar till your fingers bleed, if that’s what makes you happy. Don’t let anyone stand in the way of your dreams. Don’t let anyone tell you that being weird is a bad thing. Don’t you fucking dare let anyone try to stifle your creativity, or your passion, or your goals.

happiness
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