Celebrate Yourself

My first apartment in New York was pretty amazing.  It was a fairly large studio (based on New York standards) on the top floor of a four-floor walk up on the Upper East Side. The price was great too, $825 per month. This was nearly unheard of in a city in which studios half the size of mine usually cost double to rent.  The bathroom even had a skylight which meant I could pee by moonlight in the middle of the night.   It really was the perfect apartment...except for one thing.  There was a heating pipe that went straight through the bathroom.

It was a big, thick heating pipe that sat nearly 6 inches away from the wall…so it didn’t exactly blend it.  I couldn’t hang anything on it because it got so hot in the winter, it would burn anything that came near it.   It was awful.  It was painted white – the same color as the walls – but it still stuck out like a sore thumb.  This huge, horsey, hot heating pipe was like a big mole on the face of my little bathroom – you just had to stare at it. I couldn’t cover it up, there was no way I could get it to blend in.  So I opted for a new strategy. I painted it red.  Fire-engine red.  I figured if I couldn’t get it to blend in, I’d make it stand out.  And it worked. 

I hated that white pipe but I loved the red one.  Everyone loved the red pipe. Friends who would visit for the first time used to say, “too bad about that pipe” would now say, “I love that pipe.”  That pipe also taught me valuable lesson: the greatest thing about not fitting is that you don’t fit in.   

I recently wrote a piece about the misfits - the left-siders.  The left-siders are like the human version of the heating pipe.  Others can easily see we don't belong and too often we believe them. What makes us different will always set us  apart even if we try to blend in.  But if we follow the lesson of the red heating pipe, must embrace our misfitedness, point to it ourselves and celebrate it. When we paint it bright red, make it stand out even more, people start to admire us for the very same thing they used to mock or fear.  They end up loving us for that thing.  Maybe it's because deep down, everyone feels like a misfit, some people's misfit is just more obvious than others.  And maybe because, on some level everyone feels a bit of a misfit, when the real misfits celebrate it, they make everyone else feel better about themselves.  And that's a good thing.  This is what Lady Gaga does.  This is what Steve Jobs does.  This is what Tim Burton does.  And Jim Henson and Salvador Dali and Batman.

Only when we paint the thing that doesn't fit bright red does it become a thing of beauty.

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Comments

[travers]

what a great story...In feng shui, the color red is associated with "amping up" something and it is also the color for the "fame and reputation area" - which is about "how you are perceived in your world and the element is fire....need i say more....thank you simon

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Sent to me by pen pal and fellow Twin Peaks enthusiast Tim Höfer, a lucious pixel painting of the iconic Red Room and a few other familiar Twin Peaks icons. That cherry pie looks good enough to eat, but honestly
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[M Barrera]

This is an empowering and uplifting story. Thanks for bringing this concept up.

[Marsdorian]

Hey Simon,

That's an awesome story with the pipe in the apartment !

I always tried to fit in, and tried to blend in by hiding my other-ness. Needless to say, it was a miserable life, and only when I completely embraced myself about a year ago did my life change for the better.

You're right, one has to completely accept one's uniqueness, making it more obvious instead of trying to hide it by blending in (useless!).
I want to become the brightest red you've ever seen !!