At the Edge of the Bell Curve

So you're at the edge of the bell curve. All your life, people have found you weird. Every time you said whatever you really felt or thought, they said you must be crazy and that if you meant it, you definitely had to change your mind. People never had the patience to hear you out. In fact, they couldn't even listen to the first minute of your heart-to-heart. Naturally you've formed the habit of refraining from being honest. You've been training yourself *not* to say anything from the bottom of your heart. To survive in this world totally alien to you, you've had to just pretend that you felt and thought just like the others did. You've been such a fine actor no one even dreamed of what you really thought and felt at the bottom of your heart. Yes, you've been outside the group, so you've had a very hard life. When you did want to assert your own beliefs, you had to be really logical and consistent in your reasoning. In fact, your reasoning had to be perfectly structured. You had to justify your convictions very well. Why? It was precisely because you were part of the minority. Those around you never had to justify themselves. All they had to do was simply say, "But of course I'm right because it's natural. Look at the others. Everybody feels and thinks the way I do." So they had absolutely no need to be logical or consistent in their reasoning in asserting that they were right. You, on the other hand, had to be perfectly logical in asserting yourself. As soon as they find the tiniest loophole in your awkward reasoning, they lose no time in abusing you, telling you with 100 percent confidence that you're wrong, unnatural, weird, different. They even believe you're insane. You've been having a good fight in resisting your temptation to attack them back. But sometimes, only once in a while, you failed to resist it. You couldn't put up with the external pressure any longer. So you attacked them back -- once in a blue moon. Once they spotted your striking back, they would conveniently jump to the conclusion that you didn't deserve to belong to their group, ostracizing you. So you're no longer part of their community. You can't ever again get your message through to them. They simply refuse even the slightest piece of your argument. And that's the way you've always led your whole life. You've led a good life. You've striven quite well. You don't have to struggle any more. Just relax and wait for the time your Porter comes -- perhaps another 20 or 30 years later. He'll take you somewhere you really belong -- not here at this God-forsaken edge of the pigsty of an earth, but at the other end, perhaps beyond the Andromeda. I myself don't know where exactly. Someone once told me that it was a land where adorable angels dance round and round to harp music for an eternity, intoxicating you with their heavenly smiles and graceful movement. Just relax and worry no more. Very soon you'll be taken to that brave new world.

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