Roaming the world at will

A friend sent me a poem recently that resonated strongly with the way I often feel. It's quite sad, yet simultaneously heroic.

The Men Who Don't Fit In

by Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

Everyone who resists or shuns the path in life prescribed for them by a society built on status, power, progress, and materialism will inevitably feel as if they "don't fit in" whenever they come back into contact with that culture. Money has a loud voice. But it's not the only voice that matters, and it's easy to forget that in a society where we are increasingly disconnected from the things that make life worth living.

This line especially makes my bones cringe:

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.

There is definitely an increasingly big part of me that wants to settle down, start a family, an help to build an honest community based on fairness and sustainability. But never does that image involve me being a "steady, quiet, plodding one."

For me, "winning" is building fulfilling relationships, trying new things, experiencing everything life has to offer - gain and loss, success AND failure - without fear or judgment.