You are you and I am I

The only quote that graced my study table for years was from Fritz Perls:

“I do my thing and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.

If not, it can't be helped.”

I picked up those lines in my early twenties when I was no more social or sociable than I am today.  I typed it out neatly on a piece of paper which remained on my study table for years.  One guy who befriended me for years and tried his best to make me both social and sociable was quite upset when I refused to dump that inscription.  Not that I didn’t oblige him by making sincere efforts to become more human by joining certain social circles.  But I was a failure.  Rather I made a fool of myself in any group I chose to join. 

The realisation that I couldn’t be part of a social group without making a fool of myself prompted me to embrace solitude.  Though Fritz Perls’ lines yellowed and the paper on which they were typed died a natural death, the quote continued to live on in my memory as one of my favourites.  I have repeated it time and again in various classroom situations. 

Now that the Nobel prize for economics goes to someone who maintains that human beings are essentially cranky, I’m fully convinced that my choice of solitude was absolutely right.  After all, why would I set my crankiness against the gargantuan crankiness of the world out there?  Let me live with my crankiness and you live with yours.  Hasn’t that been my stand for years and years? 

Let me, then, paraphrase Perls thus:

I live with my crankiness and you live with yours.

I am not in this world to live according to your cranky demands and sentiments,

and you are not in this world to live according to mine.

Live out your crankiness and leave me to my own.

If, by chance, your crankiness matches mine in some way,

let us tango.  Otherwise let us ta-ta.