68. Being weird, but not too weird

I recently watched Inside Out 2.

I rated it. And not just because they’re all the emotions I go through when writing this blog.

Hehe, no. There were broadly two main things that stood out to me. 

Firstly, the part where the character Joy says "Maybe that's what happens when you grow up… you just feel less Joy".

Brutal. It literally made me cry haha. 

Secondly, one of the overarching themes from the film. Basically, Riley, the main character, lies about who she is in order to fit in with the popular kids. And in the process, sacrifices who she truly is, and suffers the downstream emotional consequences of doing so.

At some level, I reckon that’s something most of us can relate to. 

And it got me thinking more broadly about that tension between wanting to fit in, and wanting to just be ourselves. 

Wanting to fit in. Ah, what an oh so familiar feeling. Annoying at times, but makes sense. 

We’re tribal creatures. Historically, being accepted by said tribe was quite literally life or death. Accepted survive, rejected not so much.  

As such, from an evolutionary point of view, I do think it’s understandable why we care so much about that sense of belonging, and more generally what other people think of us.

However, as Riley Andersen found out in Inside Out 2, where it gets a little tricky is when the ‘accepted behaviour of the tribe’ is at odds with who we are as people. 

There’s then this balancing act between staying true to who we are and potentially alienating people, or sacrificing our values but being accepted. 

Of course, if the two match up then happy days. Issue is that that doesn’t always seem to be the case. 

Usual caveat of only being able to speak for myself, but I do think that trying to play a character that we’re not, or that misaligns with who we genuinely are, does chip away at us after a while. 

We can almost become trapped by this identity we’ve created for ourselves, and feel like we have to constantly live up to it, even when we don’t want to. That can be knackering, and leave our self-image in tatters. Not a great place to be. 

I actually see similarities between this, and also the things we prioritise and chase in life. 

Naturally, there can be overlap between the two, but broadly there is stuff that we genuinely want, and there is stuff that looks impressive to other people.

And I do think it can be common to chase the latter, at the expense of the former. 

I.e a “I don’t care if this promotion ruins my work-life balance and overall stress levels, other people will think I’m smashing life” or a “Who cares if this new car cripples me financially, everyone else will think I’m a legend” type outlook.

It’s a lure towards the tangible (and therefore things that are easier to show ‘evidence’ of), than less quantifiable stuff like the quality of our relationships, our day-to-day enjoyment of life, and general internal peace.  

Basically, we can pretend to be happy. We can’t pretend to have a rolex.

Though it is essentially prioritising how people perceive us, over how we perceive ourselves. And prioritising the former at the expense of the latter can definitely be a slippery slope…

Of course, the flip side of ‘meh, f*** what anyone thinks of me’ is probably not great either. What other people think of us is important. People actually liking us does tend to affect our experience and enjoyment of life. 

I guess that ideally there’s some sort of intersection between the two. Which, without giving away any Inside Out 2 spoilers, is possibly optimal…