Conformity

Last night I went to another Dinner and Dialogue at Hillel. And again I did not say the meaningful things I was thinking during the discussion. One day, perhaps, I will be brave enough to say these things in the moment, but until then, I have this blog. The discussion was on conformity: when do you conform? when should you conform? when should you not? I gave some generic and pretty lame responses. They were real responses but just not as profound as what I could have said.

In the time before I came to school, I had a vision about what college would be like, what the other kids would be like. I expected open-minded, free-spirited atheists, agnostics, and generally non-religious people. For some reason, I figured no one in college would be religious because we'd all left our parents houses and that's where religion came from. None of the college kids I saw on TV were religious. And obviously TV is a reflection of reality.

I was quite shocked to find myself surrounded by devout Christians. Some of them were even Evangelical. People asked me to go to church with them, and when I declined, I was deemed an outsider. It didn't bother me much at the beginning of the year. But then as people got to know each other better, they started discussing politics. And with politics comes the discussions of abortion, gay marriage, and the like. I couldn't believe how many kids on my floor were pro-life and against marriage equality. Even if I wasn't actually outnumbered, I felt outnumbered. I was an outsider for sure. I had to keep silent and conform to their standards. I didn't like it.

What's worse was when everyone wanted to label me. So and so was a Methodist, what's-her-face Catholic, that one guy Russian Orthodox. So what was I? Well you've got an Italian last name so you must be Catholic. They put me in that box and I couldn't seem to get out. So I let that be my identity for a while, because that's what other people were comfortable with. The thing is, most of the people who put me in that box were not Catholics themselves and carry with them all the negative things about Catholics with them. So do I. So when they would make jokes, I would make them too. My humor is already rather self-deprecating so knocking myself for being a really bad Catholic was easy. Other Catholics - good Catholics - don't like that. They especially don't like it when they sense you're a non-believer. Good Catholics are not fond of bad Catholics conforming, which might seem antithetical to the idea of Catholicism, but it's true.

Technically, I could have kept that Catholic identity as long as I wanted. I could have conformed to what I was "supposed" to be, with the Italian last name and all. I was confirmed and no one can really take that rite away. But there was no way I could have permanently conformed. I was in a new place and in a new time in my life. It made sense to conform in the moment, but once I was removed from that dorm and those people, it didn't make sense anymore. Hell, without those people forcing me to conform I probably never would have set foot in a church in college. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. It just is. I don't regret anything in my life, but I am so freaking glad I stopped conforming. It was terribly unfulfilling.