It’s an odd thing to be at this point in life and yet regularly feel about 20 steps behind most other people.

When I was in seminary, there was a guy that lived down the hall in the dorms from me and he was a nice dude, except he had a pretty prominent flaw that surfaced regularly when he talked. He was always putting himself up against other people, wondering how his capabilities stacked up against those of others. “You shouldn’t compare yourself with others, man”, I told him once. “It’ll kill you.”

And yet, here I am, in another evaluation stage of my life, and I can’t but help and look around, wondering if I got on the wrong bus at age twenty- the bus that drove into a tunnel that descended deep into the earth, into pitch black, and then stopped and filled with anesthesia, which knocked me out for a good decade or so. It’s a separation of years I think I feel, of years lost, dribbled and poured away. A separation of years, or cultures, or light waves. A separation of something.

I don’t know how I found it, but years ago I discovered a book by a British thinker, and based on its name alone, I bought it: “The Outsiders”, by Colin Wilson. As Wikipedia summarizes it, “through the works and lives of various artists,… Wilson explores the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society, and society’s effect on him.” The book had me at “The”.

Maybe I ingested too much existentialism in my college reading.

No, I think the separation has always been there. The sense of detachment and isolation from others. The sense of being alive, but being foreign to many of the substantial things in life. The sense of being a shadow in an otherwise present and material world. It’s always been there.

“You are not alone”, Colin Wilson would tell me.

I would have a hard time hearing him through the quintuple-plied puncture-proofed psychic bubble I live in so often. About ten years behind most of my peers in my world.

The existential problem of the outsider is not new. The psychological struggles of the separated are- at least to them, as they each bumble through life.

Helen Keller found her way in this world with less tools than I possess. One’s failures to connect and to contribute in life are not issues of capability. They are issues of courage.