Islanders

The superiority complex contained within the following post must be acknowledged. Immediately, straight at the top, big and bold in a font sans serif. Arial probably. In a moment, I’m going to suggest that I have more deliberate (read: better), taste than a lot of other people. I will also make the claim that people with curated taste set themselves apart from everybody else. Please note, I’m not saying I think I’m better than you, but I am obliquely implying it. Sorry.

Let’s begin.

It’s an oversimplification to say there are two kinds of people in the world. The adage itself is so used and abused it ought to live in a shelter for battered proverbs. Should rest its smudgy laurels alongside ubiquities like ‘thoughts and prayers’ and ‘live, love, laugh.’ That said, there are two kinds of people in the world: mainlanders and islanders.

A mainlander is someone who accepts the way things are as the way things should be. They’ll tell you Don’t Stop Believin’ is a great song. That buying new is always smarter than buying used. They know exactly why Kylie Jenner is famous and think seven Fast and Furious movies is a completely acceptable number of Fast and Furious movies. Mainlanders want stability and security. Sweaters in November and sandals in July. They’re integral pieces of happy families. They go to barbecues on the weekends and head home around nine. Life, for a mainlander feels assured and comfortable. A song on the radio and they know all the lyrics. Mainlanders are part of something. They fit.

Islanders are different. They accept nothing, almost on principle. They question everything they’ve been told and constantly reassess what they believe, often to the point of self-immolation. They find the edges of what they find comfortable, and gives themselves little shoves beyond. To an islander, life shouldn’t be predictable and stability’s a cop-out. If an islander enters a room, their first instinct might not be to find the lightswitch, because what if there’s something special in the dark?

I told you this was going to be douchey.

Here’s an example. For me, and probably a lot of islanders, there’s a particular point where we pushed offshore: music. For some reason, music tends to be the star that guides us over dark and churning seas. Because almost always, we start impassive. Grow up not really listening or caring. The radio, our parents’ music, we might nod or sing along, but we aren’t touched. Music is music. It’s better than silence. Then we hear something, a song hanging from the fringes of the mainstream, and a world opens up. THIS. We might not know what it is and might not be able to say why, but THIS means something. And the act of listening becomes something active. But it isn’t enough. We need more, so we scour linear notes and go to shows and artists and genres open doors to other artists and other genres and soon we’re so deep into the rabbit-hole we’ve forgotten where we left the opening, and become legitimately flabbergasted that people know every word to Rihanna’s Umbrella and NOBODY’S HEARD OF CAPTAIN FUCKING BEEFHEART.

That, right there, that’s the island. And it doesn’t have to be music. It can be 1940’s films or french wines or mystery novels or city planning. Wherever you find that mix of passion and tunnel-vision that leads to a NEED to dive deeper and the realization that what’s popular isn’t always good, and what’s good isn’t always popular. While mainlanders might not care or notice the distinction. Islanders LIVE within it. And since we’ve developed such narrow focal points, we tend to blackout the world at large.

But it’s there. It’s been there the whole time. And as we look back from the shores of our island, we notice just how far we’ve pushed away. And that’s the sharp edge of the thing, because if we squint our eyes we can see there are a LOT of people walking those shores, where ours seems empty.

But what can we do? We’re too far gone. People without passion make us glassy-eyed. People with different passions leave us longing. We’re not a puzzle missing a piece, we’re a piece missing a puzzle.

Until those rare, shining moments when we’re not. Until we see someone just down the beach standing on our sand on our island. And we run breathless into them and find we’ve taken different journeys but we’ve somehow managed to find the same special place and managed to find each other, and a connection grows almost instantaneously. And those are the moments we cling to, that make us feel like we fit too. Just a shame they’re so far between.

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