Belonging
First of all, yesterday I saw Car Seat Headrest and they were amazing. They are a band that I have loved for years, and are probably sneaking into my top three favourite bands of all time, so to finally be able to see them play live was a great experience, and one which was on my currently rather underwhelming bucket list.
The band has gained a significant following over the past couple of years, and so it wasn't a proper basement gig, but the venue still had a pretty intimate feeling. The official capacity is listed as 2300, and it felt pretty full, but I would've guessed that there were fewer than 2300 people there - perhaps I am bad at estimating crowds though. The point is - it was by no means huge.
CSH are, in my opinion, a somewhat polarising band - they are likely to either be one of your absolute favourites, or you find their music wholly unpalatable. That means that when you go to one of their shows, a lot of the people there are fairly hardcore fans who really love their music.
The relatively small venue combined with especially zealous fans allows something amazing to happen. I know most of the words to most CSH songs. Everyone else also appeared to know most of the words to most of the songs. In quiet moments, or during the chorus, or just for lines that lent themselves well to singing along... you could hear the crowd so loudly. Sometimes they drowned out the singing from the band themselves. Two thousand voices in unison, unashamedly belting out emotional, introspective lyrics into the rafters. I think a lot of CSH fans, myself included, enjoy the band's music largely because of the lyricism of frontman Will Toledo, and experience a very human connection through his music. Usually, if I am just listening to them through my headphones, I only feel that connection with him, with one human being, and even then, he obviously has no idea who I am and it is completely unilateral. But when there is a room full of people, the connection is with everyone in the room. It felt like something really special to me. It felt like I had found my people, like I was part of something bigger, like this was where I belonged.
Which is a long way of getting to the point I wanted to make in this post. I am led to believe, through reading things like 80000 Hours, through conversations with my therapist and through my personal experience, that feeling part of something bigger contributes a lot to an individual's happiness. Intuitively this seems true to me because I think the reverse often makes me unhappy - I feel isolated and disconnected, even if I still meet up with my friends and participate in society, I don't feel like I belong.
This is the reason I started painting my nails (and wish I could do so again). It was a way of saying to the world "if you think this is weird, then I am not like you. I am not part of what you are part of." It's also the reason I enjoyed and embraced GTO club so fully - I felt like part of something bigger, I had found a group of like-minded people who were all striving to achieve their goals and become better people.
But now GTO club is dead. Sure, I could go to more CSH gigs, but that'd be insanely expensive, and even then, they only last for a couple of hours at a time. Same story with esports LAN events. I felt like I belonged when I fenced at university, another option I no longer have. I don't feel like part of anything grander at my job - only one person meaningfully contributes to our codebase, and it isn't me. Most of my friends don't share most of my interests. When I go to the gym, I have never made the effort to talk to anyone apart from the select few people I know, even if I see them there 5x a week. In the chess league I am still the youngest player by about a decade, and the mean age is likely double mine.
Perhaps I am just whining, as always, painting myself as a victim and looking for your pity. That I am somehow better than everyone around me, and that is why I don't belong. I hope that is not how I come across, but accept that it probably is. Regardless, it would still be nice to be part of something, and be happier. Perhaps that is why I have grown more socially conscious, in the hopes that I can work towards a common goal with a large group of people, something that we all care about. Perhaps I will find what I am looking for in the open source community, if I can build up my skills sufficiently and actively participate in it. Perhaps I will end up returning to university at some point, and will feel at home in academia.
But, as always, I really have no idea. Suggestions appreciated.