Beads (Facebook note) in The irresistible urge to rant, riff and ramble

The real question is not what you can claim to be [by their standards]. The [real] question is why are we behaving like the fawning sycophants of the popular kids who get to decide who is in or out, based on their criteria? We’re not kindergarten kids any more.

Why are we justifying ourselves to these people?

Now we’re playing their game. They’re saying “hey, I have the Cool Treehouse Of [The Real Thing]” where all the cool kids hang out. You’re not here with us.

“But you could be. All you have to do is shove the person behind you out of tree and you’ll be one of us… until we need another person shoved out of tree.”

~~Me, earlier, on yet another one of those posts justifying that the community needs gatekeepers who get to define what is “real” art and what isn’t.

When I was a kid in Primary school, I think there were a lot of older kids doing bead handicraft, because suddenly there were these beads you could find everywhere– plastic faceted spheres of vivid colour– and the cool lad got his hands on a red one. Naturally, that triggered a spate of bead hunting, and a week later we all came back with our finds. There were a couple of people who had found green ones, a couple of people who had found purple ones, and a couple who had found transparent ones, and the cool lad instituted a club of bead owners. He would be the king, he said, since he had the most special one– there was only one red.

Then I showed up with a blue one.

I was told, in no uncertain terms, that my blue one wasn’t “really” a bead, and I couldn’t join the club.

It took me two years– two years and Dr Seuss– to realise that I had understood everything backwards.

I had not been rejected by the cool club because my bead wasn’t good enough.

My bead was not good enough because I was not part of the cool club.

You cannot enter the cool club by fighting to be accepted by their rules, because the rules are not designed to be fair. They are .designed to keep the Cool Treehouse exclusive.

That, I felt, was manifestly unfair.

I didn’t realise the next stage until close to a decade later:

My worth is not determined by whether the cool kids accept me.

My worth is determined by who I accept, and who I can help.

Popularity, likes, acceptance, fame– none of those are important.

The only important thing is this:

Have you helped someone today?

Have you made someone happy?

Have you protected someone who needed it?

If not, what are you waiting for?

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