George Carlin’s Rant Is More Relevant Than Ever — “It’s A Big Club, And You Ain’t In It.”

If you feel like an outsider, you’re not alone.

I slid my lunch tray along the chrome rails, grabbing a mini pizza instead of the mystery meat in brown sauce, and added a carton of chocolate milk and an ice cream sandwich. Now I had to find a place to sit. As I neared the end of the cafeteria line, anxiety turned to panic.

My eyes scanned the dining room — dozens of long tables with six chairs on each side, filled with kids, none of whom I knew. I put on my best I-know-what-I’m-doing look — pretending to find the friends I didn’t have while I searched for an empty table in the room. There weren’t any. After a few minutes of wandering around, utterly lost, I saw a spot and sat down.

I ate my food in silence — miserable, uncomfortable, and feeling like the outsider I was.

That was me when I was fourteen. An outsider: someone not part of the group. Someone outside the circle, looking in. The new kid in a high school with a thousand other teenagers.

My life as an outsider continued into my twenties — I protested the Vietnam war, followed an Indian guru, started a natural foods business, began a lifelong meditation practice, and became a vegetarian. Later, I supported the home-schooling of my kids, used alternative medicine, held liberal views in conservative circles, and brought a spiritual approach to my thirty-year career in corporate America as a general manager, sales leader, and executive consultant. But, being an outsider isn’t just what you do or how you live. It’s more than that.

You’re an outsider when the inner you doesn’t feel connected to the world around you. You don’t feel connected because you can’t relate to the norms of conventional society, its unspoken rules, the games being played, and expectations of how you ought to think, look and behave.

If you’re an outsider, you don’t always enjoy what others seem to find so thrilling. You observe conversations and behavior of others and often want no part of it. Sometimes, you feel as if you were airdropped into a movie where everyone knows their lines, but you. When others think the chit-chat at a party is fantastic, you find it superficial and dull. People laugh at jokes you don’t find funny and do things you can’t conceive of doing and say things that make no sense.

Your beliefs are different. You question accepted norms and the standards. You hear the voices of the mainstream, but you also seek out the drums being silenced. You look even more carefully to understand the complexities and back story when something is presented as an easy solution — “Take this pill and swallow it. Everything will be fine.”

You feel like an outsider because your instincts tell you something is rotten in Denmark. The system looks like a big charade, a come-on, a grand seduction, a scheme to prevent you from becoming a free thinker. You don’t want to become one of the many, and you aren’t about to sacrifice your moral and ethical values to conform to someone else’s ideas of the way to be. You’re attracted to wisdom, not intelligence.

You keep most of your opinions to yourself and a few close friends, but your beliefs run deep, and you don’t compromise them. You have no patience for hypocrisy, whether from the church, government, or big business. You’re appalled by how much power the ultra-wealthy have and the influence they have on politics, the media, and our lives.

You aren’t fooled by the accepted narrative right now, and it doesn’t surprise you that anyone who disagrees is marginalized, censored, and labeled as a fool, a radical, and a danger to society. You find it laughable the U.S. government is finally admitting UFOs exist. And, over a year and a half later, political leaders are finally willing to look harder at what actually happened in Wuhan. Quite interesting. Better late than never.

As the machinery continues to rumble, you look even more to Mother Nature for comfort. You stand in awe when the sun boldly rises like a giant orange ball over the morning horizon on the beginning of a sweltering hot summer day. You marvel at the stars, the moon, the change of seasons, the smell of decaying leaves, and the sweet scent of a gardenia blossom as you pass by a lush garden on a midnight walk in the tropical heat.

You want to know what makes you tick, what brings the breath of life into your lungs, so you disappear into your inner world, into the sounds of silence, and listen to the music of the spheres. The poets, the mystics, the artists speak to you, and you understand their language.

You wonder where all the rebels have gone.

But, you remember George Carlin at the Beacon Theater in 2005.

“They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”

Some may dismiss this as the ramblings of a mad man, but you know it’s true.

You’re disappointed in the people and institutions who have lied, hurt, and betrayed you and others through greed and corruption. But you don’t waste time on things you can’t do anything about — you focus on what’s in your control. You stand firm in your beliefs and withhold judgment of others for theirs. You remind yourself everyone is on their own journey.

You try your best every day, choosing to do the right thing over doing things right. You’re not always successful, but you don’t give up.

You’re an outsider and damn proud to be one.

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