As the story goes, in resigning his membership from the Friar’s Club, Groucho Marx sent a letter to its President saying:
I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!
As a young Groucho fan, it was an idiosyncratic statement, a clever turn of phrase that caught me by surprise. Today, it is more resonant, a concise explanation of both my reticence and subsequent abandonment of club membership of any kind.
The desire to belong runs deep within me. Subconsciously I have always hoped connection would limit insecurity, sure up my position in a world where I sometimes struggle to establish myself. It is what drove me in high school to join so many clubs. Membership at that age often just meant showing up. I spent little time thinking about core values or missions of the clubs I was in. The fractured attention of my teenage years prevented any significant existential day-to-day doubt.
In college, I joined clubs to provide a deeper sense of belonging. Acceptance in these groups validated me in many ways but it also altered my view. It was the fallacy of this outsider that belonging would eliminate my feelings of alienation. Sometimes it did. Just as often it fostered a more prevalent, deeper sense of detachment. I became extremely critical. Perhaps I was jealous and frustrated I was not closer to those within the groups I had worked so hard to become a part of.
My mind has a penchant for small and petty thoughts. It caused me stress. It frustrated me, especially as much as I valued one to one connection. It felt like a very clear duality within myself.
While I may have felt close to some or all members of a group, true belonging has felt slightly beyond my grasp, temporary if at all. At times I have acted in foreign ways to fit in. Inside its walls, I could see belonging in name was overrated.
That kind of belonging immediately felt limiting, constricting, like I had to adhere to a code of conduct, a sense of behavior, written or just expected. Any activity, club or job, that encouraged me to stifle my deeper need for expression ultimately wore on me.
Membership after college was a lot more challenging. The immediate opportunities for longer-term commitments like Grad School, Teach for America or The Peace Corps, seemed to be time commitments I couldn’t fathom. I was suddenly without teachers or mentors. Left to fend for myself I wasn’t sure how to pursue the opportunities I thought I wanted. This meant I quit as many things as I joined.
I changed jobs always hoping the next one would pay me more and make me happier. The eventual change always felt like a prison release. The air on those Thursdays that were inevitably my last day, always made me feel like a newer, better version of myself.
Those feelings were ultimately short-lived.
I quit clubs because the ones I thought would fulfill me ended up doing the opposite.
The softball league and improv classes became more competitive than fun.
The staff at the food pantry I volunteered at would degrade the very people we were trying to help.
And the social club I joined at 29 with promises of social advancement ultimately left me feeling like just another interloper trying to feign enjoyment.
My desire for belonging has been constantly worn down by a disappointment at the rewards of actual belonging. The metaphors all held true; all that glitters, the grass being greener, I kept traversing dividers hoping for fulfillment.
I see now I have looked at membership of any type as a kind of definition as opposed to an intersection. Which brings me, as I approach the halfway point of my 30s, to the company of men.
I have never belonged to a group of men in any official capacity. I never had a large circle of male friends at any point in my life. The most time I spent with a group of males was the four months I spent living in a frigid apartment in Florence with three other guys. I hadn’t realized my excitement would be tempered by my own exacting standards and unrealistic expectations. I was overly sensitive and underexposed. I took small statements too seriously. I acted above them.
I constantly struggled to feel like one of the guys. I was trying hard to fit in while still feeling like an individual. I didn’t know how to ignore one or blend the two. The activities felt at odds with each other. All of it feels embarrassing in hindsight.
Traditionally, only a limited range of emotions has been considered acceptable for Men. For decades that meant male bonding took place in very specific areas; private clubs or the great outdoors with few options in between.
Part of this is because we still don’t know very much about the men we’ve created. We talk about what a man is and how he should act. But our language limits the capacity of men, both in thought and in action. The recent headlines about men focus exclusively on what they are or what they aren’t.
We have been so obsessed with what a man is, we have otherwise ignored the idea of what a man can be.
And that is the conversation most interesting to me.
It is the membership I am most interested in. The positive potential of men. The ever-expanding definition of redefined masculine ideals including previously unincluded attributes like compassion, empathy, patience, foresight, open-mindedness, as well as, not in place of, the more familiar and traditional strengths.
It has been acceptable forever that men go off into the wilderness, into the world, on their own, to sojourn, to explore, to immerse, to possibly return or not. Yet it has been far less acceptable for men to go off into the wider, more nuanced, exploration of masculinity.
I was involved in a discussion recently about the need for more activism about men, amongst men. And while I have never considered myself an activist (see quitting above) I was struck by my own renewed understanding of the word activist.
To that point, it was a confrontational word associated with uprising and protest, a word that made me uncomfortable, an activity I was happy to pre-quit.
But the word isn’t all-encompassing, the word itself doesn’t ask all of you, it merely asks for the opposite of being inactive. To whatever degree that means for you. And I think that is what is so important now.
Whatever is happening with men at this very moment may or may not be permanent. The activism we need now is not a shouting down of opposing ideas, it is the voices of men from all backgrounds to share, openly, and honestly, their hopes, their fears, their struggles, and their uncommon, often uncelebrated, triumphs.
The reticence I have felt in memberships of all organizations rises to the top again as I ask myself: is this something I want to be part of? Can I temper my criticism so as to be open minded? Do I want to subject myself to criticism? Do I want to go out of my way to make incremental gains towards a positive yet still nebulous goal?
I may have operated as Groucho for decades but I am no longer looking to quit every club that would have me as a member. Nor am I am looking for a club to define the way I behave.
I seek to redefine the way we talk about belonging. To expand the Venn diagram. To add new circles. To open and enlighten the dialogue so we no longer fear not fitting in, but not being honest.
That is the kind of membership I am interested in. A membership where you belong not to a title or a group…
But to each other.
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