Sometimes, out of fear a person would deem me weird, rather than acknowledge their fear and grow from that knowledge.
Labelling me weird means you are afraid of someone else being different from you.
It also means you do not care to know me, but wish to remain ignorant of the fact that I am mostly harmless and am a very loyal friend to those people who are willing to abandon their fear of me and to love me just as I am.
Knowing this, I understand why I have few friends because truth telling like this is certain to scare away people unable to handle the truth.
They will deny it to be true, and accuse me of insulting them, telling me "You don't know me."
Of course, I do not know you but the truth is, my own fear of you do not end with me projecting it onto you, and labelling you "weird". That would be too easy to do.
Instead, I would meditate on why people label other people they barely know as "weird", and come to realize that such labelling is based on ignorance about the "weird" person and the unwillingness to get to know the other person and truly acknowledge them as a human being.
Perhaps we project our anxiety about "being different" onto other people, mainly because we want to fit in, and keeping out people who we think don't fit in is for the greater good.
Sadly though, creating a "them versus us" scenario violates the human rights of the person who is merely different from you, even if it may be higher intelligence, being more patient than Job, or having the biggest collection of plush toys.
For myself, I find that I grow from the knowledge about other people who are my closest friends. This comes through sharing our thoughts about our lives, and overcoming our fears about what concerns us, such as food, shelter and entertainment. Often it requires promises of commitment followed by honoring that commitment.
Perhaps it is possible to be weird and wonderful. Perhaps weird morphs into a new kind of difference which arises out of love and respect for each other. Maybe it's time to embrace the fear and transform our inner weirdness into something wonderful.
For love conquers the fear of being different.
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