How to Be Accepted Where You Don't Belong

The title reflects my signature move. It's pretty much all I've ever done, from my youth hanging out in ghetto jazz bars to a music career as the only white guy in the jazz or latin bands, to my chowhounding in restaurants of every stripe, earning respect and friendship from waiters who normally roll their eyes when people who look like me walk in. In fact, this is a primary chowhounding skill: finding acceptance where one doesn't belong.

There's a trick for it (which, like all my tricks, is crazy-easy though super-counterintuitive). Let's use "an American in Portugal" as an example, since that's my current circumstance. There's a convivial place where everybody's a regular. Their sandwiches (with meat grilled on a tiny hibachi just outside) are great, but outsider might wonder how to gain entrée, given that the joint falls silent when they set foot inside.

In this scenario, 99% of people go one of two ways. They:

1. Stay the hell away, or

2. Strive to conquer

#1 is the way to protect one's comfort zone. No gain, no pain.

#2, where one blusters in with one's big personality and tries to make friends, is one of those propositions we might envision in our cartoonish imagination but which fizzles in reality. To be sure, there are rare people who can actually do this, but I'm not certain they're the healthiest people, or that they can stand the test of time if this is more than a one-off.

The first thing you need to recognize is that you don't need to prove yourself. None of those regulars became regulars out of worthiness. That guy telling stories while the rest laugh uproariously didn't get this gig because he's the funniest guy who auditioned. They all just settled into roles. No one earned any of this. They became regulars by being regulars. So that's the route you'll take.

Venture in, calm and kind and polite, with no entitlement or pressure. Peaceful and relaxed and not drawing attention to yourself. Be a happy, satisfied odd duck. Enjoy being among the disdainful skeptics, as a minor color in their larger painting (a fine example of the "turn-the-cheek" move which has been largely misinterpreted).

You're an odd duck, but you're not compelled to act like it. Embrace your outsiderness, but be a comfortable, pleasant, happy outsider. Comfortableness is a framing choice, irrespective of external circumstance. So choose comfort. With that tiny shift of framing, you have completely changed the reality, like magic. You're now a disamingly comfortable odd duck.

Now keep coming back, continuing to be pleasant and low-maintenance. Don't seek engagement. Don't assert your big personality or vie for attention. Don't try to join the reindeer games. Your very familiarity already makes you a part of those games, though it's not consciously noticed. You are slowly becoming wallpaper, morbid though that might sound. Don't hear seconds or minutes or hours ticking. Think in weeks and months and seasons, as you glacially absorb into the decor.

Soon, you will become the odd duck, rather than merely an odd duck, though this transition will be invisible for you and them both. And, one day after that, someone who doesn't belong will venture in, and your antenna will prick up along with the crowd's. This person will strike you as an odd duck. And you'll realize with astonishment that you've become an insider. Even if these people are not your best buddies, and don't slap your back when you enter. You're now our odd duck.

Don't solve for the wrong problem. You don't need to cop the culture or painstakingly "fit in". Remain the odd duck you patently are. Just become, via sheer passage of time, "our" odd duck by showing up. A lot (see "Win By Not Quitting"), letting the engrained human faculty of familiarity work its magic over time.

You may not have stoked what feels like real warmth and active belonging. It may remain a more passive belonging. But passive belonging can be better. Active belonging has requirements, not all of them immediately apparent or appealing. And active belonging brings responsibilities which might not be entirely agreeable. Passive belonging is just fine. You may be a non-belonger, but you're "our" non-belonger. The non-belonger who belongs!

I can assure you that there are very few places in the world where an odd duck can't achieve passive belonging by simply showing up. Regulars, it turns out, become regulars entirely by regularity.


I played greasy trombone in a few crack houses at the height of the 1980s epidemic. I didn't need these measures, because musicians get a pass. They inherently belong. It's one of the things I liked best about being a musician.

But I became familiar enough with the social fabric in such places to assure you that a newcomer, from a completely different context, and even one who never consumed the, er, product, could have come to belong in such a place, just by sitting quietly and calmly nursing a beer night after night. It's just matter of time of picking up momentum as "the white guy who comes in for a beer", spoken with very mild affection. It's that easy, if you don't make it needlessly difficult.

I can't overstate how well this works even at extremes. A guy in a yarmulka, following these instructions, could, if he were perverse enough to want to, make friends among white supremecists (without debasing himself via ingratiation). The vast majority of biases—even hatreds—are conceptual, not personal. That's not to say you'll be well-received at first. But when a racist insists "Some of my best friends are..." that's not just a risible trope. It's often true. And me, I like being that best friend, because I'm the rare bird (odd duck?) who can accept without approving.

Feeling vs. Being, Again

If you really hate to think of yourself as someone who eats like a pig, you have two choices:

1. Not eat like a pig, or

2. Eat like a pig and attack anyone who notices.

#1 is the sane choice, though #2 is vastly more popular.

It's the same choice people make when they choose whether to feel smart or to be smart. Feeling smart locks you into stupidity, but at least you feel smart. Being smart locks you into feeling stupid, but while you scarcely notice your smartness, at least you won't actually be stupid. And nearly everyone chooses feeling smart over being smart.


We're all aristocrats now, and every naked Emperor feels entitled to affirmation.

AI is Not Hype

I remember when the Internet hit big—so big that people inevitably went anti on it. It's a passing fad. It's overblown. It's stupid. I had friends who refused to buy a modem or reserve an email address. Sit tight, it will all pass.

That didn't happen.

It's also not going to happen with AI, either, though the anti takes are spewing at the exact same point in the hysteria curve. AI is vastly more transformative than the Internet was. Don't ignore it, and don't bet against it. It's here to stay, and is already way better than people realize.

Extreme Hypocrisy

I will never fathom how the Right went from "Don't tread on me" to "Comply utterly or be killed."

But, to be fair, I also will never fathom how the Left looked back at the Moral Majority movement of the 1980s (when an extreme faction tried to impose its narrow, rigid doctrine on a heterogeneous nation) and thought "Hey, let's do that!", becoming the new sanctimonious enforcers of moral rectitude. I'm old enough to have whiplash from conservative moralism snapping into liberal moralism. I don't remember a breather, just a distant, foggy memory of the Before Times—of hippies and guitars and Manson.

Hypotheses

Scientists are notorious for their disdain toward new proposals (ideas, explanations, connections), especially when they come from outside science. This deprecation has nothing to do with scientific method, which makes no demands on hypothesizers. Experimentation requires rigor, and conclusions require training, but hypothesizing actually benefits from a dilatory big-picture—even poetical—approach.

Hypothesizing can't be trained. It's a creative flexion for which some people are more suited than others. And the precise, linear style of thought of those who choose careers in science is not known for fostering creativity and insight. Scientists can be outstanding hypothesizers, but it's despite their training and milieu, not because of it. Many are conservative to the point of hidebound.

Just as it's risible that politicians are expected to not just garner votes but also run things, it's odd that we expect scientists to dream up hypotheses. A poet—anyone versed in disciplined dreamy speculation—might be better suited.

This exclusion has been willful but made necessary by limited bandwidth and poor signal-to-noise. It would be impossible to triage (much less test and prove) every daft notion streaming in from outsiders. But a poor signal-to-noise ratio does not augur a low ceiling. The lost gems might have been immensely useful. Some people are immensely creative and insightful, and most of them don't go into science, so their contribution is lost.

LLMs could perform this triage at scale, uncomplainingly, with deep knowledge and institutional skepticism approximating a trained scientist. Such hypothesis mining could make a profound impact.

Self-Driving Cars Work

Every once in a while I get the idea to tally my predictions, right and wrong. The problem is I can't remember any of them.

I don't fancy myself a predictor. I just muse, in a particularly earnest and relentless way, spiked by the clarity of 50 years of yoga and meditation and seasoned with my experience in seven distinct careers, coming up with ideas, theories, connections, perspectives, explanations, and, sometimes, predictions. To me it's all of a piece. I'm not aiming to be Nostradamus, I'm just trying to penetrate my own confused disorientation. 

But here's one I got flat wrong: self driving cars seem to work.

My issue was always driver/pedestrian interaction. As a native New Yorker, I'm aware of the stalemate in the war between pedestrians and drivers. It's a virtuous stalemate, because if either had the upper hand, traffic would never flow. 

Ideally each would simply use its allotted right-of-way (that's what the traffic lights and stop signs are for), but you can only go so far with legislation, restriction, and organization. People are sloppy, inattentive, selfish, and batshit crazy. So even if 90% diligently played by the rules, the remaining 10% is reigned in solely by fear of violent death.

Their own violent death, for pedestrians, and the death of some litigious stranger, for drivers. And there's nothing like a car sweeping through an intersection with verve to shut off the "maybe I'll try to cross real quick" impulse.

But self-driving cars will smash on their brakes, and all parties know it. This rational caution can be gamed and leveraged to a degree that cars driven by drunken crazy randos can't. Stalemate lost, pedestrians win, traffic no longer works. If one wave of an umbrella at an oncoming car makes it screech to a halt, everyone with an umbrella (or a baby carriage or an arm) will become the High God of Traffic and cross whenever they bloody well want to. And isn't that the pedestrian dream? Can't we sense (at least in east coast urban centers) that this is only tenuously restrained by a wholesome violent death fear?

The only solution would be to separate roadways from pedestrians (raise them, lower them, etc), but that would cost trillions in city centers. So I predicted self-driving would be impossible.

But that scenario turns out to be an edge case within an edge case.

First, "belligerent pedestrian encounters in East Coast urban centers" represent a tiny fraction of driving scenarios, overall (though it's not for nothing that Waymo only operates on the West Coast). Edge case!

Second, so long as there's still one single car out there being driven by a red-blooded human, pedestrians can't count on mercy. 10% self-driving, 50% self-driving, or even 95% self-driving means pedestrians must watch their asses or potentially die. We're far, far away from 100% self-driving, and by that point things might be different in any number of ways. So this is the edgiest of edge cases within the greater edge case, not the impassible hindrance I'd imagined.

There are other edge case considerations with self driving cars.



Watching this video of self-driving in Manhattan, I kept squirming as the car did things I wouldn't do. Like barrelling down 7th avenue at 30 mph, just inches from a long row of school buses parked to the right. I knew—but the algorithm doesn't know— that kids sometimes venture into the road from between buses to, say, chase a ball. So you slow down, you hug the left side of your lane to give extra room (or move left to another lane). You put your attention there, and if you can't, you slow down even more.

I've assumed I'm superior to algorithms because I entertain a wider range of scenarios. But two things occur:

1. Most other drivers (in fact, probably 90%) would blithely barrell down 7th avenue at 30 mph just inches from a long row of school buses parked to the right. They wouldn't imagine the edge case. So the algorithm is behaving perfectly normally within the bell curve.

2. In that same video, a bicycle whips by obliquely from out of the driver's blind spot, and the self-driving noticed and compensated. Me? I did not see him coming. I'd have had a much nearer-miss, and my startled over-compensation might have gotten me rear-ended even if I'd avoided the bike.

So my vast experience and diligent carefulness protect against extreme edge cases. But my human perceptual limitations make me vulnerable to common dangers.

That's why self-driving wins. I was wrong.

My Miracle Shower

I have a miracle shower. It's blocked in by thick glass panels, and there needs to be a door swinging open, which means there must be cracks, and you can't seal them because then, obviously, the door wouldn't swing open. You can actually see air through the cracks to the left and to the right and under the door. What's more, the shower head faces those cracks, spraying them relentlessly. This should not work. It's non-viable. It's impossible. And yet—and yet!—my floor stays dry. Luxuriously dry.

I don't understand how it works. Water spraying relentlessly on cracks should create leaks. That's basic science. Yet it does not leak. Hence "miracle shower".

What's more, I enjoy a truly great bath mat. Whatever you're imagining, it's better than that. As I exit my miracle shower, my feet are welcomed by a generous rectangle of fresh fluffy clouds. There is music. There is a sense of a life lived to its fullest.

Delight is fragile. So I was not surprised when, one morning, I stepped out of the shower and discovered that my mat was drenched with water. As my foot touched down, it made a "sploosh" sound.

Three problems at once:

1. My impossible shower had finally fulfilled its Wile-E-Coyote-suspended-in-mid-air-past-the-cliff-edge destiny, and was leaking the way it was always meant to,

2. The primacy of my bath mat was made a mockery of,

3. It being the cold/moist season in Portugal, nothing dries till springtime. We are in the Age of Mold. So I can hang this mat on a line until the (fluffy) sheep come home, but it will...not...dry.

When the problem continued, I consulted with contractors and chatbots, gathering enormous knowledge of sweeps and dams—silicone strips and such to glue to the door's underside to minimize the crack. And I ordered them from China, where—good news!—vendors stood ready to rush me this stuff in absolutely no more than five weeks, max!

Awaiting my silicone workarounds, and having swapped in a fast-drying piece-of-crap bath mat (oh, how the mighty have fallen), my shower began to leak worse and worse. I kicked the mat four feet from the shower, and still it drenched in pooling run-off. Finally, I tried something, purely by whim: I tilted the shower head a random one millimeter to the left.

Complete dryness ever since. Nary a drop of water, anywhere.

In the aftermath, I'm left rubbing my eyes and pondering What Happened Here. What can be learned. I'm not normally one for auguries, but this is so "on the nose" that I can't avoid the feeling of being force-taught something life-critical.

First of all, it reminds me of the time when I was a kid and a New York Mets pitcher (Ron Darling?) was in the midst of a horrendous slump, with no end in sight. Tom Seaver traveled to Shea Stadium to offer him the following advice (I'm paraphrasing): "You feel like you're a million miles away. But you're actually not. You're off just the tiniest little bit." That image stuck with me, and I refer to it whenever strike zones start to seem unhittable.

But while this circumstance echoes that, this was less about resilience than about premature conclusions about fragility. Just because you know what's wrong doesn't mean you Know What's Wrong. It's another "Cousin Manny Thing", where "knowing" is a map, while "experiencing" is ownership.

And this makes for a particularly bright example, because the entire shower situation is shrouded in mystery. None of it is truly sealed, nor could it be, so every dry shower has been a bona fide miracle. And whatever shower head movement had produced a unicorn trajectory to break everything was another miracle, as was my random adjustment returning it all to impossibile functionality. It's been raining miracles. Showering them, if you will.

This all presents a rich field to harvest for insight and revelation, but, really, I'm drowning in that, already. Especially the confusion and catastrophe which give rise to it. I don't regret what I've gone through to learn what I've learned, but, going forward, I'm out of the market for life lessons. Adolescent me would have eaten such lesson-teaching for breakfast, but, at age 62, I understand more than I want to about the world, so the catastrophes feel needlessly obtrusive and exasperating. Really, I'd just like to take a shower, please, thanks.

If you find yourself unwittingly embarked on a long, grueling adventure with no clue and no user manual, and finally return, battered and scarred, to find some glib wizard eager to finally dump all the secrets, it won't feel like reward. "Too little too late," Gandalf!

That said, I must confess that I'm far more delighted now, stepping out of the shower to a bone dry floor and my unimaginably fluffy bath mat, than even before. This brings to mind, yet once again, the very first joke I learned as a child (from "The Bozo the Clown Show"):

Q: Why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?
A: Because it feels so good when I stop!

Bozo really knew what's up.

Over the last two years, I've endured twelve trips to the emergency room, seven campylobacter infections (leaving me with risk of antibiotic resistance and a permanent ban on street food and third world travel), six severe orthopedic conditions requiring immediate surgery (which I'm managing via yoga), and way more. I withstood it all smartly, and am able to walk and eat more or less normally, which feels awesome. And having achieved this respite, last month I made a brief prayer.

I normally avoid prayer, because 1. I don't want stuff (I'm the sort of guy who's impossible to buy presents for), and 2. I fear unintended consequences, and 3. other people need way more help than I do, so I hate to occupy attention. But after ceaseless catastrophes (health and otherwise), I amiably requested "no more tough-love lessons." Also: if The Powers That Be get entertainment value from watching Jim narrowly evade peril, maybe they can maybe wind that down just a smidge.

I'm not someone who hears voices, but the gist I picked up by way of response was something like "Oh, sure, ok; I thought you liked it like that."

But now this.

Yes, it's just a leaky shower. And the lessons were rich. And the outcome was pure delight. So...I guess I do "like it"!

Choose a lesson! They're everywhere! Like with serendipity, it's all a question of which you choose to tune in to—which you choose to frame. I'll start with this unassailable observation:

A dry bath mat is no small thing.

Post-Covid Narcissism

The data is beginnning to support my observation (see all postings tagged "Post-Covid Narcissism" in reverse chronological order) of a profound and enduring increase in narcissism since quarantine.

From Wall Street Journal: 

Staying in My Lane

When I learned to say "peht mahk mahk"—with a relatively convincing Thai accent, to boot—I thought my spice problems in Thai restaurants would be over. But the very first time I swaggered in screaming this phrase, and my waiter giggled in surprise, I was brought spiceless curry.

Why?

Because "Americans don't like spicy."

"Do Americans who've taken the trouble to learn to ask for spicy heat in Thai also 'not like spicy'?"

No answer possible, no answer proffered. Gears shifted, he promised me that next time, it would be spicy.

"What if you're not working?"

"Just tell the waiter you want it spicy"

"I just told you I wanted it spicy, in Thai!"

For the sake of Jesus, Mary's lambs, and all the king's horses, I honestly give up.

But I never do, do I?

Nepalis have taken over a nearby pizza/kebab joint. I chatted with the new owner last week, running through my many favorite Nepali dishes that are, alas, not preparable in a pizza and kebab joint. And today I walk in, am greeted warmly, and ask for "tzzia", the Nepali term for milk tea.

"Peht mahk mahk" is pretty obscure, but let me give you an idea of how much more improbable it was for me to ask for tzzia. A Bhutanese friend of the owner hangs out there, and even he doesn't say it right. When I ordered, he quizzically repeated it back to me from across the dining room. I corrected him until he finally achieved the not-quite-"ch", not-quite-"t" initial consonant.

That's how rare this is.

Also: I watch mountain climbing videos for fun (dog grooming when feeling even less aspirational), and haven't seen a single Everest climber order tea correctly, even ones who spend tons of time in Nepal. There is a serious possibility that I'm the only non-Nepali not living in Nepal who pronounces this word correctly. I am a fricking unicorn.

The milk tea arrives. It is low in sugar, and spiced all wrong. I figure the guy just doesn't know how to make it.

Afterwards, I pay, and he asks me, guardedly, how I liked it. Just as guardedly (not wanting to insult), I let it be known that the half dose of sugar and the use of cardamon as the sole flavor were not what I'm used to.

Shocked surprise flashes across his face. Woah. This guy wants it the real way.

What a surprise, right?

Once again, I give up. For today, anyway. There's a particularly rowdy Jack Russell Terrier who’s about to be shaved, gotta go.

Reciprocity

Way back in 1992, I hooked up saxophonist Ralph Lalama for a week long gig in Spain, where we both performed at the Seville Expo with a Catalan big band. We got along well, and a couple of weeks after we returned to New York, I bumped into him at a jam session he was running in the East Village. "Hey, Ralph!" I chirped. He glanced at me cooly, nodding imperceptibly before turning away.

One of Ralph's buddies explained things to me. "Ralph, you see, fancies himself an elder statesman in the jazz scene, so he figures that who he greets and how he greets them confers a certain anointment and validation. He wasn't sure you'd earned a full level of public respect from him."

"But," I replied, "I wasn't looking to be anointed. I was just saying hi." Ralph's friend shrugged helplessly. This is how it parses to Ralph. It had nothing to do with what I was looking for. I was hardly in this movie. This is the Ralph movie.

A week later, I bumped into Ralph in a Chinese restaurant. "Hey, Jim!" he chirped. I glanced at him cooly, nodding imperceptibly before turning away. I didn't run into him again for thirty years, whereupon he was still furious about the slight. He wouldn't look at me or talk to me, the ogre who'd dissed him. I never expected him to make the connection of his behavior in his sphere of influence to my behavior in mine, but I certainly never expected any of this to rock his world.

After a long period of unilateralism, I've started leaning into this behavior. I remain non-reactive, and always try to help where I can. I don't act spitefully or hold vendettas, and don't sneer or raise my voice. But I’ve begun to follow the playbook I'm handed. As with Ralph, I mirror. Not with venom or malice. Certainly no extra "oomph" to prove the point. I let people set the rules of engagement, and I amiably follow along. I reciprocate.


Since COVID quarantine, people feel less obligated to reply to one other. They don't answer messages if they're busy, or distracted, or didn't fully understand or approve of what was said. They'll let it go if they don't detect an immediate deliverable. And sometimes they don't reply just because.

I was eager to try this out for myself. It seemed like it might be liberating! So I did an experiment with a couple of longtime friends who'd grown less and less engaging, and declined to reply to each of them just once.

I never heard from either of them ever again.


I stoically followed the Golden Rule for my long unilateral period. But I eventually realized that it doesn't work if there's only one person doing it. As I wrote in The “Golden Rule” is Loftily Unattainable (I'd suggest reading the whole thing; it's short):

When the Bible suggested doing to others as you would have them do to you, it turns out this wasn't a helpful reminder. I always figured it was like "Sit up straight" or "Eat more vegetables"—a sappy homily people sometimes need reinforced, despite its blatant obviousness.

No. I see now that it was flabbergasting existential judo—a Copernican flip of perspective. And it was received as a lofty principle which, like other forms of godliness, could only be aspired to, and never put into actual practice.