Of Marginality and Exclusion

Today I had a little reunion with some old classmates of mine. Although I have realised it the whole time, the small niche of companions I still kepp in touch were the same bunch of teenagers that were excluded and marginalized since our time in school. Although most of them have considerably advanced to form more close social bonds with the new friends and peers in their current lives, I still could not help but feel the sense of isolation we all may have shared. From a variety of social backgrounds, from the poor working class to the upper middle class, the dominant Chinese speaker to the dominant English speaker, from separate interests and fields, somehow we were all linked. There was however, one salient difference between us, which was that only I felt the marginalization. Perhaps this would imply that they weren't truly marginalized and that they simply had small social circles, but it struck me that only I was able to discriminate my status in mainstream society.

Marginality however, is not a trait or property I detest. So I could imagine that I may have developed a "fetish" to cling onto my individual status and that my insight and thoughts are constantly pushed by a perpetual urge or desire to be "different". It does also help that one of my greatest fears is to remain as an ordinary average joe, a label that strikes my heart with pangs of anxiety and despair. However, yet deep in my won heart, I know I serve a minute, close to nonexistent, role in this world.

Social exclusion, however, has not diminished my view of the importance of relationships and human lives. So there must be an extravenous factor that would explain what many would dub the murderous and deprived pathological loner to still bear kinship with human peers. To locate this factor, be it playing a causal or contributive or deductive function, is however too complex a task for one lone human to do. It is however, with great speculation that I propose that an intuitive search for trust and honesty in this world that will compel a person to find that factor. Whatever this factor serves to show, it is one that may be innate in us all.