fitting-in

Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped

Why do the birds return?_ __hat d__ou mean?_ Brandon looked lost all of a sudden. __ mean, they could go anywhere. They__e free_so why do they return to this place?_ Brandon grinned. __ause home__ home no matter how bleak.

Cheers to all the Rebels out there who care way too much about Art and Truth and Magic to fall in line with the mundane task of fitting in.

I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth "home." Before you know it, I am calling luxeries "needs" and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don't think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set.

The world accommodates you for fitting in, but only rewards you for standing out.

Many of us have gotten so used to playing to the expectations of society, of our families,of our friends, and of our minds, that we don__ even allow ourselves to consider who we really are or what we really need. We ignore the callsof our hearts, giving our lives, instead, to thedemands of an outside world built on fitting in.We can stop this, right now. We can choose to listen to ourselves, to heed our deepest callings,whatever they are. We can give ourselves thefreedom to be whoever the hell we want to bein this world. Right now, if we choose to.And why wouldn__ we?

Maybe it's wrong-footed trying to fit people into the world, rather than trying to make the world a better place for people.[as quoted in "Brain Gain" by Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 4/27/09 issue]

If I exist, then surely there must be someone else out there like me.

I am too much alien and not enough monkey to fit in here.

Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out?

I don't fit into any stereotypes. And I like myself that way.

Don__ be bothered with what you think other people expect of you when it comes to your raw talent.

I think fitting in is highly overrated. I__ rather just fit out... Fitting out means being who you are, even when people insist that you have to change. Fitting out means taking up space, not apologizing for yourself, and not agreeing with those who seek to label you with stereotypes.

How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?

Teenagers are complicated and at times stubborn, yes, but we are not dumb. We see the world in a different light than the rest do, and sometimes, we__e misunderstood because of it. And that__ alright. That must be the definition of __uman being_: Misunderstood. But neither of us should tolerate degradation in any of it forms.

We won__ be able to choose who we__l have to talk to in order to keep advancing in life. We won__ always like them, and they will most likely not like us back either, so it__ wrong to confine ourselves in our own little worlds when there__ plenty of it outside to explore.

Take comfort in the knowledge that you are different, even from the different ones.

Me, I trust people who show you what freaks they are. It's the ones who blend in that ya gotta watch out for.