[June 1999 journal entry]
A physician with whom I work closely asked me a few days ago about being an ‘outlier’ -- what this description means, from what I am an ‘outlier’, what drives this process. I shared with him the following reflections on being considered/called an ‘outlier’ – e.g.,
I see myself as an ‘outlier’ in relation to my immediate family, my extended family, the ‘religious’ sphere, medical ethicists, . . . . I do not view myself as an ‘outlier’ in the same way as those who are dismembered for various reasons from societal spheres. I looked back to two points in my first wife’s experience with multiple sclerosis in the 1970s that were thresholds – i.e., (1) her decision in 1977/78 to use a wheelchair (recalling the dilemma of using a wheelchair to continue to have ‘normal’ experiences versus not using a wheelchair because doing would marginalize us in the eyes of the ‘normal’) and (2) the message in 1978 from the neurological clinic in West Germany advising that, due to how far her disease had advanced, we not return (noting that this advice, while delivered respectfully and gently, had a marginalizing impact in that she and I heard that we were seen to be ‘abnormal’ among others with neurological illnesses and, therefore, even more so elsewhere). There were inward and outward dimensions to feeling/being marginalized. Also, there were more and more matters taken for granted by those around us (e.g., walking up stairs) that we could no longer take for granted. And our sensitivities were heightened re how we were strangers or threatening reminders when we were in ‘normal’ spheres (e.g., conversations, plans, activities, prayers, hymns, . . .). Interwoven with all these experiences were my completing graduate education and beginning graduate teaching.
A physician with whom I work closely asked me a few days ago about being an ‘outlier’ -- what this description means, from what I am an ‘outlier’, what drives this process. I shared with him the following reflections on being considered/called an ‘outlier’ – e.g.,
- that ‘outlier’ means to lie/be outside some defined boundary,
- that parallels to ‘outlier’ might be ‘stranger’ or ‘loner’ or ‘guest’ or ‘visitor’,
- that statistically the term ‘outlier’ has to do with being an anomaly to a normal distribution of data re standard deviations from the mean,
- that inherent to being an ‘insider’ is living some variation on the defining/normative theme.
I see myself as an ‘outlier’ in relation to my immediate family, my extended family, the ‘religious’ sphere, medical ethicists, . . . . I do not view myself as an ‘outlier’ in the same way as those who are dismembered for various reasons from societal spheres. I looked back to two points in my first wife’s experience with multiple sclerosis in the 1970s that were thresholds – i.e., (1) her decision in 1977/78 to use a wheelchair (recalling the dilemma of using a wheelchair to continue to have ‘normal’ experiences versus not using a wheelchair because doing would marginalize us in the eyes of the ‘normal’) and (2) the message in 1978 from the neurological clinic in West Germany advising that, due to how far her disease had advanced, we not return (noting that this advice, while delivered respectfully and gently, had a marginalizing impact in that she and I heard that we were seen to be ‘abnormal’ among others with neurological illnesses and, therefore, even more so elsewhere). There were inward and outward dimensions to feeling/being marginalized. Also, there were more and more matters taken for granted by those around us (e.g., walking up stairs) that we could no longer take for granted. And our sensitivities were heightened re how we were strangers or threatening reminders when we were in ‘normal’ spheres (e.g., conversations, plans, activities, prayers, hymns, . . .). Interwoven with all these experiences were my completing graduate education and beginning graduate teaching.
