Saturday, September 22, 2007
Passin' Me By
Stumbling across this vid brought back some memories. When The Pharcyde first popped onto the hip-hop scene, it was 1992 and I was 15. At the time, mainstream hip-hop was under attack from the 'bitches and guns' sound coming out of California. With the New York rebirth still in its infancy and the South still repped by acts like 2Live Crew, the West was where it was at, and The Pharcyde was an interesting alternative to the Dr Dre/Snoop Dogg uprising. They rapped about ordinary subjects and did it in a playful, free form way. At the time, it was a refreshing change of pace, given how formulaic West coast hip=hop was becoming after Dr. Dre's The Chronic went multiplatinum.
In 1992 Passin' Me By may as well have been the opening theme song for my life. I was highly dysfunctional at the time. Shy, timid, and insecure were all accurate ways to describe my behavior, particularly around girls. My morals/values were more or less set in place by then, and I was fairly certain most of my peers were full of shit, but I lacked the courage to stand alone and truly do my own thing. So I faded into the background when social situations arose. Generally, my life was about playing basketball, drawing, and neurotically picking myself apart, which wasn't truly that far outside of ordinary, but without any sense of perspective, it felt like being on an island. All of this lead to a sort of intellectual and verbal paralysis around girls I was interested in. Again, without any knowledgebase to draw on, I didn't realize how widespread such feelings were amongst my peers.
My insecurities lead to inevitable certainties, such as belieaving that any girl who sparked my interest was inherently superior to me in some way, shape, or form. After all, they were almost universally higher than I in the social order, so there was no reason to believe that they would want to talk to someone on the fringes. I had little or no testicular fortitude; fear ruled my social interactions. More often than not, fear of rejection became self-assured notions that rejection was inevitable, so any thoughts I might have had of actually asking one of these girls out on a date (gasp!) were derailed before they had a chance to become little more than whispers in my mind. Compounding the problem was a phobia of driving that plagued me into my late teens. How that happened I'll never know, and how I got to the point of attending racing schools and riding motorcycles (and eventually partaking in a motorcycle racing school) is a story for another day.
It's such a shame that it took so long for me to realize I was not alone, and that such fears were founded purely in my own internal mythology. Looking back and thinking about the girls who intimidated me then, I realize how foolish it all was. At best, they were just decent, average females, and at worst, they were the type that lived their lives as village bicycles. The point is, there was nothing to be afraid of or intimidated by, but I knew so little about the world at that age, and I had so little guidance on the subject, the realization escaped me. So the girls, all of them, ended up passin' me by without ever having been presented with an alternative.
I'm tempted to feel remorse or regret, but there really isn't any need. While it would have been nice to have a girlfriend or two during my high school years, not having one allowed me time to start exploring other components of life. It was around that time that I first started nibbling on different spiritual and moral philosophies. I began taking art a bit more seriously, primarily because I knew drawing classes would equate to easy A's, thereby saving my high school GPA. I developed a disconnect with society that allowed me to stand back and watch their interactions, and my lack of social obligations gave me the time to consider what it all meant, which allowed me the chance to refine my ideas of who I wanted to be. By the time I graduated high school, I was fairly confident of who I was, if not yet confident around women. I hadn't settled into my own skin, but I had begun the process by developing enough self-awareness to stand on my own against the constant onslaught of conformist energy.
Passin' Me By summed up the way in which I related to women at the time, and continues to do so today, though in a very different context. Now I am content to let women pass me by, as the years between have altered my perceptions and understanding. Once in a great while I will come across someone that brings on those old feelings of inadequacy, but such sensations are almost totally unheard of these days. I've grown more and more comfortable with myself and much more aware of how humans work in the more common reality. It is OK that I am not what most women are looking for, because most women are not what I am looking for. In that way, turnabout has become fair play, so to speak, and a balance has been struck in my understanding. As we mature, we all realize that there is nothing special about most of our fellow humans. They are merely people, with a myriad of talents, abilities, flaws and failings, just as we are. Some will be rich, some will be poor, some will fire our neurological synapses in a way that forces us to stand up and take notice, while most will not. Such is the Way and such is life.
These days, it is more accurate to say that I am willfully letting the world pass me by. It would be inaccurate to say that I lament watching the steady stream of humanity moving perpetually by my niche in the larger fabric of existence. Given the current state of the social order and its divergence from where I want to be as a being, there's really no reason to hold on.
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Now playing: Tool - Right in Two
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