DADS READ: “There is a Tribe of Kids” by Lane Smith

DO I HAVE A TRIBE?

This is something I've been thinking about a lot the last few months and years.  Do I belong somewhere?  What does it mean to belong to a Tribe?

Various events in the past few years have triggered these thoughts.  One of those events was visiting the National Building Museum with this Robert Frost quote from "The Death of the Hired Man": 

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in." - Robert Frost

Another one of those events was this book - "There is a Tribe of Kids" by Lane Smith.  It explores what we do to belong, how we try to conform to a group - regardless of how different we may be, and how the search for community can be overpowering.

Mallory and I have moved almost ten times since we were married 11 years ago.  Each time we've moved, we have managed to meet some of the best people along the way.  We both grew up in Utah, were married there, and had friends from High School, College, family friends, and friends from church.

But when we decided to leave our "home" - Utah - and move to Boulder, CO in 2009 - we started a long journey to find our own tribe.  I worked as a receptionist at a law office having three private practice attorneys.  A married couple - where one practiced criminal defense and one practiced social security disability law - occupied two of the offices, and a wills & trusts/corporations attorney occupied the third office.  Mallory studied full-time at a vegan culinary school for six months.

When we first met, Mallory was a vegetarian by poverty - she couldn't afford meat while living on campus going to college - and she found that she felt better not eating meat.  The vegan culinary school seemed like a good fit, I had become a part-time vegetarian by that point as well (mostly eating vegetables at home, and sometimes eating meat when I ate out).  But mid-way through her program she came home and declared that she "needed a steak", it was a deep, human response, and so we got steaks.  For awhile we sought intellectual community in the environmentalist vegetarian crowd, in purpose, if not in practice.  But after Mallory's response, we began to explore a PALEO lifestyle - and Mark Sisson was intriguing to us since we spent most of our time doing trail running, cycling, and triathlons.

I felt like I kept looking for something.  Something that I believed.  I was born into a Mormon family, and practiced Mormonism for a long time, but that felt like a default, something that was chosen for me.  I remember having a inexorable draw to establish some deeper identity.

For awhile I felt like trail running and endurance sports could be my tribe.  Maybe PHYSICIST, maybe RAW Vegan, maybe PALEO, I felt like I was constantly evolving, but nothing seemed to fit well.  I would become really impassioned with a topic, turn into a proselytizer for my new obsession to anyone who would listen.  But in hindsight, I was really trying to convince myself.  I think that is what I do, I think I try to convince myself that I've made the right decisions, and I look for evidence along the way to reinforce that decision - Dan Ariely gives a lot of good reasons why this is a common human phenomenon.

There is a great mantra running through the movie "I Heart Huckabees" (which Mallory introduced me to) that I keep thinking about - "how am I not myself?" - how do I know I am making this decision because "I want" it, how do I know that I am not allowing cultural influence to decide for me, how do I know that I am giving my decisions over to a default bias built into the system, and how do I know I am not reacting defiantly for the sake of pushing back?  I don't know.  I also don't know why I don't seem to fit in anywhere.  I've explored my discomfort with masculinity here, not really feeling like I identified with other men or masculinity as a concept.  Am I doing this to fit in?

Mallory and I spent three years in Los Gatos, CA - in the San Francisco Bay Area - running in the Santa Cruz Mountains, finding more lovely people that we care about, but I was still trying to find my tribe.  I started Law School, maybe ATTORNEY, maybe the LAW would become my tribe, but I didn't necessarily fit in with my Law School classmates, mostly because I feel conflicted about the legal practice.  I don't like arguing.  I tend to favor consensus building.  That led me to the U.S. Patent Office, because I wanted to be part of a broad, idealistic concept - "advancing scientific knowledge and disclosure for public benefit".

I have enjoyed being a Patent Examiner since it allows me to sit in the middle, look at an application and read the available patent literature and publications to see if the applicants have a novel and non-obvious invention.  I get to let the research and prior art (past publications) argue for me, and I get to sit in the middle to make a quasi-judicial determination.  But I'm still not sure if I've found my tribe yet, the Patent Office is large gathering of fairly isolated, scientific personalities that don't spend too much time socializing.  The few times I've tried socializing at the Patent Office, I have been grateful that my socializing in the past has been minimal.  I don't think the Patent Office holds my tribe, but I feel like I am getting closer.

The quest continues, I am still searching. and that is why I really identify with this book - "There is a Tribe of Kids" because I am still searching for my tribe, and I hope that I can find it in the end.

We all have a beginning, sometimes it fits us well and we get to inhabit that space our whole life, but I am grateful I ventured on, or rather that identity left me like this tribe of goat kids left the main character.

I've tried to venture out of my comfort zone, and drifted to other States, only to move on.

I've followed leaders, and given up my authority to make my own decisions.

My favorite is the BAND OF GORILLAS - but like the protagonist, I am hopelessly off-beat.

I've connected more and more with the mystery of nature, space, and the miraculousness of life.  Did you know fireflies are real?  They exist, I've seen them.

I've spent time figuring out what I wanted through an existential crisis, and decided I like what I do, and I like being in a big city, although, it is getting more and more clear that we need to move on.  We can't sustain ourselves where we are.

I am hoping I find my "tribe".

But I am getting more comfortable with the idea that we all belong to each other, and I need to give into vulnerability - maybe my Tribe will find me if I am patient.