Am I the Only One?

Sometimes I think I am the only one -- the only one who looks at life and asks, "Huh?" And then 11 p.m. comes around, and all is well with the world. Jon and Stephen and their Comedy Central colleagues and audiences make me feel, if not normal, then at least not alone. I've been out of step with the thinking of most of the people around me for so long that I had to write a whole book about it, Memoir of a Misfit. And then the most amazing thing happened: I started hearing from readers who were so grateful to find another misfit who thinks the way they do. It was incredible! A Canadian forest ranger who spends most of his life in isolation, a young woman who decided not to commit suicide after reading the book, a former evangelical pastor who was convinced no one out there understood him -- those are just a few of the people I heard from. As different as we were on the surface, we were in fact kindred spirits.

Bringing kindred spirits together -- that's what I want to do here. Some of my misfit readers and I keep threatening to hold a reunion and probably scare the daylights out of the city that hosts it. But even as we're chatting about it, we know it won't ever happen. We're scattered so far afield that it's highly unlikely we'll ever get together.

So...if we postmodern misfit kindred spirits are ever going to get together, it will have to be here. And because I know all too well how it feels to be on the outside looking in, you normal people are invited to join in the conversation as well. As long as we're trying to live authentic lives, we're kindred spirits on the most basic level. From there, we can disagree on a whole lot of things. But graciously -- always graciously.

So tell me: Do you ever feel as if you're the only one?