I get a kick out of the way people look at me when I say I’m waking up at 5 the next morning.

Willingly.

Excitedly!

Or when I show them my (very) green vegetable juice for the day. Or when I announce that I’m embarking on a polyphasic sleep trial—22 waking hours for every 24. Or when I mention that I haven’t worked a “regular job” in the last five years at least, and I don’t intend to do so ever again.

You know. Stuff like that. Strangeness. Edges. Poking.

Is it possible that part of my motivation to do thrilling things is the fact that someone somewhere thinks I’m nuts? (In addition to improving my life, of course. Duh.) Is it just the exhibitionist edgewalker in me? (If that doesn’t give you a rockin’ mental image, I don’t know what will.)

Perhaps I should use this particular tactic to motivate myself more often? The ability to elicit strange looks and confused responses?

Would it work?

It might. It really might. But you know what’s better? The poking. I like to poke people. I get a kick out of poking people. Many people only ever experience real growth when poked, and without poking, I think we’d all get a little bit too comfortable. We need to be exposed to the things we don’t understand. Sometimes, we need to be confronted with them! We need to see that even considering our differences, we still manage to have things in common. We need to see that the diversity around us is healthy, positive—and more than that, essential to the forward movement of the entire world around us.

And maybe I’m just a little bit of a sadist. Because I admit it, poking people and seeing the freaked out looks on their faces when they’ve encountered a mindset they don’t understand, that’s entertaining. But it’s incredibly exciting, too. Because—what do you think will happen next? If poked often enough, forgetting isn’t an option.

Might they under go some kind of dramatic learning or new understanding?

Might they open up to more change and growth over the course of their whole lives?

God, it could be anything.

Doesn’t the growth potential just give you shivers?

Sometimes even the most reasonable people make some pretty unfair assumptions.

Assumptions about motive, background, pastimes, lifestyle, character.

I guess it’s the usual error (isn’t it always?), but in this case it’s particularly unfortunate. Assumptions can put others into difficult positions, weaken diversity, and tend to shut down communication. Once you make that assumption out loud (especially if you follow it up with a harsh opinion), you may never get to hear the real story.

Men, women, Christians, pagans, citizens of every shade and sexuality, Trekkers, strippers, tree-huggers, sex workers, hackers, kings, queens, burners, raw foodists, furries. (Lenses, Rick would say.) This applies to anyone and everyone. The trim femme at work isn’t who you think she is. Neither is the practicing submissive across the street. Your cousin Jan isn’t polyamorous for the reasons you’d assume, and she hates it when you call her a swinger. (The swingers don’t like it when you make assumptions about them, either.) That completely “normal” dude in your car pool who mentioned a favored fetish while drunk might be a little embarrassed, but don’t jump to conclusions. You might be surprised at what you really don’t know.

These are all real people with real lives, doing the best they can to find peace and happiness in a complicated world. Some of them have made mistakes (just like you), but chances are their preferred lifestyle isn’t one of them, and none of them deserve hasty judgment from a badly-informed source. Do you really think your uneducated opinion is doing them a favor?

Please think hard before you publish.