Embracing Your Inner Misfit

One of the really interesting things that I have discovered about patterns, particularly those that seem to relate to how people and institutions organize themselves, is that I don't seem to fit into them very well. Perhaps that is why I am so conscious of them. Whatever the case, it seems that despite the fact that I get frustrated with so many aspects of the way things are organized, I can still be hurt when I feel excluded. I think there is a distinct longing to feel like we are a part of something. I believe educating for sustainability is inclusive although some may find it ironic that I would feel better exchanging one pattern for another, which would undoubtedly leave others to feel excluded.

But here is where we need to embrace our inner misfit. While some espouse that human evolution and survival is the result of the "survival of the fittest", others believe that "survival of the anomaly" makes far more sense. It was small adaptations that allowed us to evolve over time and these adaptations were more like the result of "difference" as opposed to strength. Even the largest, most powerful dinosaur could not survive without being able to adapt to a changing environment. In "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond in his chapter entitled "How to Make an Almond" he suggests that the reason that the modern day cultivated almond tastes so sweet compared to its poisonous ancestor is due to careful selection from the occasional appearance of the sweet anomaly for cultivation over many centuries.

But let's get back to feeling like an anomaly in the present. In his article "Creativity and Leadership" Fritjof Capra addresses the importance of emergence which is the creativity that appears when existing structures become unstable. What I learned through the Utopia exercise with my grade nine class is that any system designed by individuals is eventually going to reach its limitations. That is the point at which emergent structures will appear to enable change. Our success as a species has been the result of finding systems that we have put in place that work. Our survival as a species depends on the "misfits" with creative ideas who can point out the instabilities. Either way, misfit or not, we are all an essential part of the equation.