Gray area

I live in the gray area.

This is not a commentary on this gray, rainy spring day. It’s not a description of my apartment, which is actually quite colorful. I mean it in the metaphorical sense. Most of the time, no matter what context, there is a way to classify people or things clearly as black or white, or in a this-but-not-that manner. Then there is that one object or person that seems to defy categorization. It’s not black but not white. It sits solidly in the gray area.

That gray area? That’s where I live.

I first started thinking about this issue from a professional perspective. I’m kind of an oddball among my co-workers. Most of the women my age are former teachers. There are a few that haven’t taught, but they all have Ph.D.s, which makes them fall into a researcher category with some of the older members of the development team. I have no classroom experience and no doctoral degree. Instead I have an undergraduate math degree and a strong editorial background. So, while I believe I’m equally valuable to the projects I work on, I am sort of all by myself in the gray area between researcher and practitioner. It doesn’t bother me much on a day-to-day basis, but it does make me wonder where I would go if my current job ends. The teachers can go back teaching, and the researchers can apply for research or faculty positions at other universities. Where would I go?

Once I started thinking about this gray area issue, I realized it’s a good metaphor for a lot of other aspects of my life as well. I had a hard time knowing where to fit in during middle and high school in part because my interests had little overlap with my skills. I loved musical theater, but I don’t have great pitch and am definitely don’t have the athleticism or grace of a stage dancer. I’m really good at math and science has always made instant sense to me, but I’ve never had much interest in solving math problems just for fun or designing my own science experiments. I liked being in the band, but never had enough passion or interest in music as a discipline to put in the kind of practice time I needed to become great. I never really jumped in to any of the groups related to theses things. Instead, I roamed around the gray area between them, visiting many and making plenty of friends, but never really building that core group of friends who had the same passions and interests.

While I was in college, I still did this sort of thing to a certain extent. I did eventually find a core group that I am still close to even now (ten years later, ack), but I still felt like I was flitting around the gray area instead of committing to anything. I was a math major, but I didn’t really meet anyone in my department until I was a senior. It never occurred to me to try to get a TA position or anything specifically math related before that. I had picked math as a specialty, but it wasn’t an interest of mine, per se. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew it wasn’t a research mathematician. So I hung out with English majors and education majors and music majors and theater majors. They were all good friends to me, but because they shared more experiences with each other through classes and events, I ended up out on the periphery. I felt this at the time, even if I couldn’t articulate it. I was not in that core group. I was out in the gray area. Not unwelcome, but not exactly belonging.

Then I ended up in Chicago and tried out a lot of different ways to meet people. At first I tried the bar scene, but quickly found out I wasn’t a big fan. Then I spent a lot of time at home watching movies and the like, but I got bored with that quickly. I wanted to go out, but only for two hours or so. Then I wanted to be able to leave, without guilt or awkwardness, and go home and gossip on my couch before going to bed. But people tended to be at one extreme or the other. They either stayed at bars until 2:00 in the morning, or stayed home. I preferred the gray area in between.

Later on, figuring out that it wasn’t the two hours at the bar I wanted so much as just two hours out of the house, I looked into clubs for various things I was interested in. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, so I tried out some of the fan club stuff. I found out I was not such a huge fan, when considering the full scale. I loved the books and movies, but had no interest in writing fan fiction or going to wizard rock concerts. I was only a medium fan, in the middle. It was the same for Scrabble. I like to play, but really don’t care about the triple word score. I find it more interesting to play the cool word for 10 points than the boring 2-letter word no one knows for 50 points. I wasn’t a real Scrabble player. And it’s again the same for running. I liked to run, and even to do races, but run a marathon every year? Forget it! I’ll stick to my 3-to-10 milers, thanks. I’m cool here in the gray area, halfway between occasional 5K-er and serial marathoner.

So, anyway. Lately I am finding the gray area to be a nice metaphor for understanding why, despite being involved in many things, I still ended up as a loner. People often (usually?) connect through shared passions. But the truth is, I don’t have any passions. Or, maybe I do, but they are for things I can’t do very well, like sing show tunes or acapella music. I either don’t care enough to have that shared passion, or I’m not good enough at something to really participate. That’s why I can’t get out of the gray area.

Ever since I found a way to articulate this, I’ve been sorting out how I feel about it. I know it makes me a little sad, but I couldn’t really describe why. It means I spend more time by myself than the average person, but I’m ok with that. That doesn’t make me sad just on its own. So what does?

I had a bit of an epiphany last weekend as I stood listening to an acapella group rock out so some song or another. I was happy, bubbly, having a great time, and as I watched them perform, I thought to myself that they were very clearly having a good time too. I felt their joy. And that’s when it hit me.

I experience a lot of my joy vicariously.

I am sincere when I say that I felt joyful at that moment. I really did. But I came to the realization that I was simply sharing their joy. That kind of thing can be wonderful, but it is not the same as feeling your own joy. This will sound like a bit of a pity party, and I don’t mean for it to be, but at that moment, I realized that I feel very little of my own, personal joy.

For years I’ve been watching my friends and colleagues start relationships, get married, buy houses, have children, and a host of other momentous life-changing things. I have been happy for them. I mean it. I have. I’ve never been in a super resentful place. But there has always been a sadness underneath. I always thought it was because I felt like they were moving on without me, but even that didn’t entirely make sense because so many of them remained in my life even after they got married or had children or moved. There was something else.

Now I think I understand what it is. When something amazing happens to a friend, I feel joy for them. I really do. But it’s vicarious joy, and at some point I come to terms with the fact that it’s not my own personal joy that I can carry with me. I feel it, which is wonderful. And then I lose it, which is lonely. I’m not really in the circle where the joy is happening. I am watching from the gray area.

I think that loneliness is what I fear most about still being single. Not the loneliness of being by myself on a Saturday night. That part honestly bothers me very little. It’s the fear of being in the gray area forever, and never having my own joy that I get to keep. I’m not lonely when I’m alone. I’m lonely when I am with other people, watching from the gray area.

There’s one thing that gives me some hope, though. Once in my life, I was in love. (That’s not the thing that gives me hope. I’m not that girl. Keep reading.) And I told that guy once that I was sad that I didn’t have a passion. He told me I was wrong. He said I was passionate about honesty and friendship – two of the best passions anyone could have. He was right, and later, it occurred to me that I was also passionate about him. I think I could also be passionate about someone else.

I’m not miserable. Truly I am not. But I do hope that someone, someday, comes along that is patient enough to stick around and see that kind of passion come out in me. It’s not like music or technology or education. It’s not something you discuss on a first date. It’s something to be understood and discovered over time. Maybe if someone is patient enough, he’ll see that passion and pull my out of my gray area into his inner circle, where the joy is something we get to keep.

Maybe, and maybe not. In the meantime, to whoever reads this: thank you for sharing your joy with me.