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"To be nobody but myself- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me somebody else- means to fight the hardest battle any human can fight, and never stop fighting." - E.E. Cummings
I think that many of us acutely suffer this struggle in our younger days. We start as a block of marble in childhood, and influences (friends, school, parents, etc.) over time slowly chip away to the sculpture that emerges from within. Sometimes experiences (traumas) chip a little too much and we spend years thereafter repairing little cracks and misshapen bits. But eventually, by our late twenties or so, we emerge as a reasonably solidified manifestation of our character.
Yet even then, as our silhouette has calcified and we’ve generally come to terms with our identities, many people still mask their truest selves for the convenience of circumstance (‘friends’, social circles, work dynamics) and fear of rejection. This is fair in some cases when you must begrudgingly ‘play the game’ for the purpose of niceties, but to live a life of compromise in that way is an utter waste of the uniqueness that makes us individuals. To Cummings’s point, it most certainly is a daily fight to maintain our authenticity.
Reflecting on this, I’ve considered some of the times in my past when I was much less sure of myself and much less confident in my person; it’s always telling to consider where you gravitated in your youth. For myself, there were two formative groups of weirdos to which I belonged in high school. The first being the swim team and the second being the UIL team. The former has its own tales, but here I’d like to ruminate on the latter.
But first, “What is UIL?” you might be asking. Well, allow me: University Interscholastic League (a.k.a. competitive academics for public schools in Texas) is the broader organization, but my arena specifically was Literary Criticism. The Literary Criticism competitions entailed a combination of tests and essays that aren’t worth exploring here, but the more interesting piece is what that experience brought me and how I remember that now.
You see, the various teams that would come to compete at these meets each had their unique flavor of nerd: bookish historians, charismatic debaters, mechanical math minds, etc. This made for a fascinating melding pot. Structurally similar to track meets, you would fill a high school auditorium with 300 dweebs at 8AM on a Saturday, and then have this melange of gigabrians all mixing and matching as they putzed around all day awaiting their specific event.
As you would expect from such a socially awkward collection of outcasts, the average meet goer was weird. We were all weird, in our own various ways. Yet, that was precisely what I came to adore about the experience. Regardless of how odd, how idiosyncratic, or how manic you may have been, there was a place for each and every stripe of nerd in that community. If you thought you were odd for the manga you brought to read, you were only to be outdone by the bespeckled maniac in a wizards’ hat uproariously holding court over a DND campaign in the opposite corner of the cafeteria.
And at this point, I think it’s worth noting that, yes, I was precisely as weird as you are imagining high school Wynn to have been. Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart weird either. I was just dumb enough yet just sly enough to sweet talk my way onto the team, but clearly lacked the horse power of a starter (I solidly rode the bench as an alternate). But with that I was in hog heaven being the dumbest kid in the room, another trait that’s served me well time and again.
Benchwarmer or not, that experience taught me more than mere trivia (Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer for Literature in 1953, and I’ll remember that until the day I die). There are the obvious elements (study habits, discipline, camaraderie) that I’m grateful for having had exposure to at that malleable age, and then there’s a more subtle piece. Competitive academics nurtured within me a deep admiration for authenticity. Surrounded as I was by the fringes of the collective Northwest Texas high schools’ social outcasts, it gave me an appreciation for the sense of community that could emerge from a more generous acceptance of each others’ eccentricities. These experiences impressed upon me one of the famous lessons oft quoted from Kerouac:
“...I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Aww!’” - Jack Kerouac, On the Road
It’s interesting with hindsight to consider how this manifested itself as I floated through the various friendgroups of my young adult life. Undergrad, being the transformative time that it is, largely lacked a single cohesive social circle for me. I made close friends here and there, but never found the camaraderie that I think many people derive from Greek Life or club sports (the results of which were amply self-inflicted by my unfortunately singular focus on getting a big boy investor job after school). That is to say, there was a fair amount of work I did on myself in my first few years out of undergrad reprogramming my social skills and building my confidence, and it was fortuitous timing that that would occur as I was getting really into music.
The dance music scene in many ways parallels the competitive academic scene of my youth. A wild statement, but I’ll unpack it. Really serious music lovers, compulsive crate diggers like myself, are usually a bit odd and a lot passionate. Not unlike those high schoolers waking up at 6AM on their Saturday to go take tests for ‘fun’, the serious festival-goers typically have an irrational love for this thing they’re chasing. It takes some effort, a bit of organizational finesse, and a very real passion to attend some of these events (the tickets, the flights, the camping, the rain, the shine, the muck, the movement, the lights, the action, the mayhem). With that, it provides a centerpiece of flashing lights and bumping music for odd ones to coalesce around, like moths to a bass pulsing flame. This central love creates a sense of community, and the eccentric culture that has emerged around dance music lends itself to the same experience I unpacked above. If you thought you were odd for your psychedelic onesie, you’ll be vastly outdone by the Madhatter hocking luminescent flowers and jigging his way across the festival grounds.
This element of community and sense of freedom creates a space for the mad ones to emerge, and “...the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…” rarely reserve their verve for life to a single arena. I’ve found it to be ubiquitously true that the voracious hunger to learn and to live seldom confines itself to a narrow field of focus. There’s a pervasive nature to passionate individuals. Time and time again, the friends I’ve met through these types of emblazoned activities unfurl their interests to include so much more. The most exciting people in the world are the odd ones with obsessions:
“So, you’re a tech cofounder with an insatiable fervor for house music that produces on the side? Oh, and you run marathons when it fits? Yeah, let’s be friends.”
“Oh wait, you’re ecstatic about a niche subgenre of bass music that this unknown South African DJ pioneered? And also you’re building a mobile engineering, coding, crafting art project of infinite lighting on the side? Yes, please tell me more.”
This lesson is embodied in one of the most iconic ad campaigns of all time:
A legendary piece of advertising from the Jobs era of innovation at Apple (corresponding commercial here), and a motto I contend is worth channeling. Those who are crazy and crazy enough to be themselves authentically are filled with such fire that they set those around them ablaze.
Reflecting on my last twenty-four months, and my descent down the crypto rabbit hole, I think that my personal internalization of this idea aligned with what I saw in this new industry— a collection of zealots, degenerates, and outcasts united by the potential of this nascent technology to (maybe) push the status quo. And for the most part, I felt that. With the space being so young, and its technological experimentation so broad (Web3 touching finance, art, culture, music), crypto drew in such a variety of sharp, fringe people that it echoes of my UIL experiences. And although my future within Web3 is fluid at this point, I still look at my time in the space as a verification of this piece’s thesis. Being surrounded by the smartest, strangest, and most passionate people I can find has yet to fail in enriching my life both intellectually and personally.
And as the great Bard said:
“This above all: to thine own self be true…” - William Shakespeare, Hamlet
- W