(photo cred: @davidburnettfoto)
When I was 16 years old, and finally able to drive myself, I discovered two of my to-this-day favorite things: Going to the movies, and The Outsiders.
I didn’t know it then, but going to a movie – in a movie theatre – allowed my brain a distraction from the constant (and sometimes nonproductive) thinking of my Enneagram 6-wired head. I could tamp down all of my threat-forecasting and the self-imposed pressure to always be productive. For 2 hours. All I had to worry about – literally – was what was on the screen in front of me.
And in this case, what was on the screen in front of me was a story about a gang of kids who were the product of absentee parents, socio-economic struggle, hard knocks, and questionable decisions.
I. Loved. That. Movie.
Once I knew the ending to The Outsiders and could stop worrying about who lived and who died, I saw it several times. With anyone who would go. Once it came out on VHS, I would rent the VHS player and the VHS tape and watch it over and over again. And once I had my own VHS player, I bought the tape.
I have probably seen that movie over a hundred times in my now over half-a-century-old life.
Why? Great question.
At 16 I had very present parents, no socio-economic struggle, no real hard knocks, and had made pretty straight-arrow decisions. Nothing on the surface of that movie related to my life.
But something in that story got to me.
It can be summed up in a quote from the novel on which the movie is based, the novel that S.E. Hinton (aka Susie Hinton) wrote in 1967 when she herself was a 16 year old girl: “They grew up on the outside of society. They weren’t looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.”
Brene Brown, in her research on vulnerability, said “One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing. In fact, fitting in is one of the greatest barriers to belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be in order to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”
I was on the inside of a family and the inside of a church community, yes. But as a not -thin-enough and probably-too-nerdy teenager who just wanted to make chocolate chip cookies and help boys with their math while they talked to me about the girls they actually liked, I knew what it felt like to be just outside of some real belonging I desperately wanted.
Looking back, The Outsiders spoke two things to me that would change my life: 1) I was allowed to believe I was good enough to be included, as myself, with that group of friends I had loved from afar and 2) I really did have a calling on the horizon for loving the kids who thought their worth came from the trouble they were making.
Later that year, I found myself enveloped by that great group of friends, my tribe still – 40 years later. They loved me then and they love me now for being exactly who I am.
And a few years after that, I was able to start my teaching career. Once I had that classroom of my own, full of trouble-making and life-navigating teenagers, I showed them The Outsiders every year. (Don’t worry – It was rated PG and ‘legal’ back then for me to show it with parent permission.)
We would spread the watching over two days of class and at the end of the movie we would talk about family and forgiveness and love and society and class systems. We would talk about empathy. We would talk about brotherhood. And we would talk about belonging. Belonging…. just as they are.
I can’t wait to hear about how you’re figuring out how to belong in your own life. And if you need help with it, I’d love to be your SodaPop Curtis (IYKYK).
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