That last one has me thinking about bullying. Which I do, a lot, as someone who was bullied and socially ostracized as a child, and who has mixed feelings about the current narratives around the phenomenon.

I object to the notion of bullying as an act perpetrated by individuals.

Bullying is a social phenomenon. It's about in-grouping and reinforcement. It might be provoked by one person, but generally it is a more organic thing that grows within a group, across many individuals. They intuit something about the target "not fitting", and act accordingly.

I've experienced this side of it, as well, in my life as a construction worker. I'd characterize these events more as light, collegial ribbing than malicious bullying, but I see these things as existing on a spectrum; outgrowths of the same social impulse.

I see all of this as part of our collective survival impulse. After all, as much as we tend to forget it in our alienated, solipsistic culture, our ability to work together is a major factor in our continued existence on this planet.

In dangerous situations where you need to be able to trust your life to your team - construction and farm work, military service, violent team sports - the utility of this behavior reveals itself.

You have to trust that the person next to you is able to humble their own ego enough to act in the interest of the group. Without this trust, the team falls apart, and the work cannot be completed. No football, no buildings, no electricity.

The group becomes a hivemind, first seeking to assimilate the person that doesn't fit, through light negative reinforcement or peer pressure. If the offending member still doesn't conform, they are either flat-out rejected or tormented into leaving voluntarily.

This is an unquestionably ugly process. My point is not to excuse or glorify it, but to explain why it happens, in order to provide some context for how we could better deal with its manifestations in childhood and beyond.

I've come to find gratitude to the groups I've been expelled from, throughout my life. Each one has taught me something about myself. The first, deepest cut, from the kids in my elementary school class, was probably the most valuable to forming me into who I've become.

Those kids, in all their cruelty, were showing me something very important about myself: that I wasn't fit for small-town life. That I wasn't ordinary. That I didn't naturally concern myself with the social minutiae of the kind of person at home in a provincial setting.

That I was DIFFERENT.
And embedded in that difference was an opportunity at greatness that no normal, socially untroubled kid would ever understand.
Their rejection was a gift. Without it, I might have wasted my life trying to be something I was never built for.

At 41, I'm still reaching for that greatness. I may never get to it, but I'd much rather be struggling where I am than living an ordinary life in my hometown. I like it there. I've even come to love the people, but it's not where I belong. That life is not my life.

And without bullies, I may never have figured that out.