I was in Spanish class last week and my professor had me read an article about a yellow penguin. It had words missing and I had to fill in the correct verbs in the correct tenses. Halfway through I began to cry. I couldn’t help myself. Because all I could think about was how beautiful this yellow penguin was—how rare and spectacular she was—and how, if she wasn’t wise enough, self-confident enough, self-possessed enough, she would think she was ugly. She would think she was strange. She would think she didn’t fit in and that she deserved to be outcast. If she cared what the other penguins thought about her, she would possibly allow them to bully her, to mistreat her, to exclude her. But here she stood in the photo, absolutely regal. One of only a few like her in the world.
I write about this because for those of us who feel wholly different, it is SO important that we realize that she is us. We look out into the world, and we see all these black and white penguins and we wonder what’s wrong with us. Why do we think differently? Why do we act differently? Why do we need different things to survive? So many people need to distract and fill voids and produce. But for some of us, we need quiet. We need solitude. We need food filled with prana and high vibe music.
Kahlil Gibran states in his beautiful book The Prophet, “A seeker of silences am I . . .”
We are conditioned from birth to want to be part of the tribe. We need to be in order to survive. Yet for some of us, being part of the tribe, blending in, fitting in, feels like hell. In order to truly blend and truly fit, we must betray ourselves on the deepest level. In Charlie Mackesy’s beloved book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, the horse says, “There’s something I haven’t told you.” “What’s that?” says the boy. “I can fly but I stopped because it made other horses jealous.”
We have to STOP hiding our wings! We have to stop staying grounded just because it makes the other horses jealous. For those of us who are wholly different, it’s time to BE wholly different. Be the Outcast. Be the Rebel. Be the Edgewalker. The norm is NOT working. For anyone. The norm leads to boredom and sickness and addiction and Big Pharma and death. So please, if you are reading this and you relate, let go of the norm. Cast yourself out. Revel and luxuriate in the ways you are different. Do the things you LOVE.
I LOVE being alone. I do. I LOVE to spend 90% of my time all alone, often in SILENCE. Who does that? Not many people. It’s weird. I rush in the morning to go snowboarding alone. I rush to get to the top of the mountain to be alone. I hustle to get on the chairlift ahead of others so I can ride the lift alone. For me, I feel my best when I’m alone. Not because I don’t love other people, I do. I’m just so hyper-sensitive to other peoples’ vibrations that for me, being with most people is like sitting next to a speaker turned on high. I LOVE other people and I really do enjoy their company, but it has to be in small doses and I need a lot of time in quiet after. It has taken me 50 years to admit this about myself. I prefer to be under a blanket reading than at a party. I prefer to talk to the woman cleaning the bathrooms than be out in the cool club socializing with celebrities.
If you’re read my books you know that none of my beliefs mirror mainstream thought systems. I am wholly different.
But instead of being ashamed of it, I am finally proud of it. Instead of coming home after a party and crying because I’m so “different and alone,” I come home and breathe a huge sigh of relief that I am different. Not that the black and white penguins are bad or wrong in any way. Just that it’s finally okay that I am yellow. And a freak. It’s finally okay that I’m not like them, will never be, can never be—and that’s okay.
So to all the yellow penguins out there, please heed my advice: your soul knows The Way. Your heart knows The Way. All the things that make you feel like you don’t fit in are not for you. Trust what lights you up. Trust what brings you peace. Trust and do what you need to do to feel . . . happy. To feel free. To feel expanded and regal and elegant in your yellow skin. Be the horse who can fly . . . even if it makes all the other horses jealous. Because the only way we can ever find our joy and our tribe is to stop apologizing for being yellow.
