OUTSIDER

i sit for coffee in lahore, pakistan as an outsider. a cultural alien.

the rules don’t apply to me.

i am not required to pray 5 times a day facing mecca or memorize the qaran in arabic. i don’t have to marry a girl my family chose to pump out muslim offspring. it doesn’t matter how many rupees i have or can make in a day through my labor in the streets. i can afford bottled water and my host family cooks every meal so my gut biome is safely sealed off behind a curtain of status and first world technology.

i’m here for the wedding of my friend though no one expects me to follow suit and carry out the tradition. they beg me to stay longer and cancel my flights but i know i won’t be back to this city. i can only tolerate the smog by knowing i leave in a few short days.

i go to friday prayer as an anthropologist at the local mosque. my mind is sheltered from indoctrination behind a shield of atheistic ideas. i wonder what they would think of the arguments i hold dear from harris, dawkins, and hitchens. their prayers and arguments for allah hit me like bugs on a windshield. the seed of their profit’s message expires under the infertile soil of my skeptical psyche.

i regretfully feel positioned above these people - i make up that i’m clever enough to remain unaffected by the magic of god’s promises. sharp enough to be in on the joke that they’re all wasting their precious time. i feel pity and disgust from my marble throne of grandiosity. these poor people trapped in their ideations and schemes - i shall spare them the truth so they may continue their meaningless toil in blissful allegiance.

as an outsider i can be judged separately.

i am not culpable for the corruption of the government, the pollution of the air, or the restriction of women’s liberties. i get to opt out. nothing bad happens if i get it wrong. i can’t be kicked out if i never got attached to the idea of belonging in the first place. i am a plant who puts down very few roots.

i often feel like an alien on this planet in general. i avoid sugar, processed food, alcohol, and factory farmed meat. i am neither religious nor theistic. i don’t care for sports or much TV. i thought school was a waste of time until recently. i have only been truly interested in a small handful of things. everything else feels foreign even in my hometown. i know very little about pop culture (not that i care to know more) from a childhood of carefully curated media that suited a diet rich in scripture consumption. i don’t even have the accent of people in my hometown.

i have a history of this

i find comfort in observing.

i would rather listen at a party than make a speech. i’ve built a habit of traveling by myself for the very purpose of stepping outside of my own life to look at it from a different viewpoint.

last week, i sat at a coffee shop in istanbul watching people walk to work, feed their roosters and cats, welcome guests into their businesses. i was serene and silent at my table knowing i was on the rim - a boarder stalker, a ghostly passerby - on the edge but not in the middle of the action. i had nowhere to be for hours so it didn’t matter if i was late or productive.

i can feel such heavy burdens of obligation and duty in my day-to-day life that i have had to find release valves. early on it was drinking, now it is often a change of scenery for a couple of days.

a fear of abandonment if i’m not perfect seems to spark my resistance to participate. i don’t want to play the game, go to the dance, commit to the plan, because what happens if i fail? will it all fall apart? my fear tells me if i play, i must execute every step perfectly or else. it is much easier not to play in the first place.

i see in my thought process i don’t want to opt out at all. i circle the edge because i’m terrified to enter the ring only to find out i truly don’t belong, as i suspected.

insider

i left religion behind in my twenties though not early enough to be unscathed. i was deeply immersed. i was proud of my identity in christ and the godly man i worked hard to be. life was clear cut for the most part. i thought i was building real wealth in heaven. i actually did. it was the only solid source of identity i had after my father passed and life was chaotic.

i was an insider.

i belonged.

i knew the score and i was winning.

the pain of realizing it was all a scam felt like betrayal - like god betrayed me. like i lost everything that mattered.

my twenties, like most of us, were spent looking for who i am. why i am. why it would matter if i wasn’t. losing religion meant i no longer knew the answers to those questions and had to start over from scratch. it was like my spiritual stock market crashed. my life raft into the future sank.

i searched for other groups to cling to, collecting a few more ideological parasites in the process that would later require extraction. so much of the confusion of the 21st century in the west seems to be a loss of group identity. i am jealous of people who have a strong sense of belonging, though i find it hard to relate. it’s easier to circle the perimeter than commit to join an exclusive closed circle. better to stay on the outside.

the thing is, though, i am involved.

i am culpable, responsible, implicated.

i am part of humanity whether i like it or not. i rely on the environment, government, and industrial complex. my existence burns gallons of petroleum and water by the minute. humanity goes through 100 million barrels of oil every day. i am a subscriber to that system with every package i order online and the trip i plan to a far away land.

the stakes are real for me, for all of us. and i want them to be real. i want to be known and attached to communities. i want obligations.

i want it to matter whether i was ever here at all.

11.22.25 | lahore, pakistan