an outcast called different

“Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!
One for the master, one for the dame,
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane."

- Old Nursery Rhyme

e ach morning I drive past a field full of sheep. Today, as they huddled together to keep warm from the winter creeping in closer every day, several thoughts came to my mind.

First of all, it is beautiful to see a flock of white wool stand out in a barren wasteland that is the dying German autumn landscape. What is even more interesting is to see a caravan standing nearby, presumably belonging to the shepherd who keeps watch over his wooly creatures. Night and day, they are being watched. This is quite comforting for sheep. But human beings, if placed in a daily Big Brother like scenario, would be less amused.

These sheep do not face any threats per se. Wolves, bears and other predators that might harm them do no longer exist in this area. And yet they are looked after. Naturally, to keep check that none of them wander off from the path. This has often been regarded as a big problem for the shepherd. What do you do when one sheep goes astray? Does one go after it or stay with the whole flock? Logically, it makes sense to stay with the flock, because leaving them might put all of the others in danger.  

As humans, we tend to believe that there is nobody watching us – despite the growing numbers of CCTV cameras installed all over the world for “our security”. Being a Christian, I believe that God is as Jesus describes in the Parable of the Lost Sheep. He will go after that one sheep, which is lost. However, human beings have become overtly accustomed to letting logic dominate their lives.

And what if one isn’t lost, but seeking a different path? After all, individualism is what we breed in the 21^st century and we encourage everybody to mold their very own life model from an unlimited amount of choices. We have become the designers of ourselves, rather than acknowledging the designer who modeled us to fulfill a specific role. Most of our time is spent searching for our purpose in life. If not that, then we spent a lot of time with other distractions, rather than focusing on the dilemma facing our world: Uselessness.
Feeling useless is what keeps people from believing in real change…that they themselves can make a difference, by being different.

This brings me to my second thought:

Why is the black sheep a negative connotation? Primarily, because the black sheep would produce black wool…and when one has a huge pile of white wool, what would one do with the tiny bit of black wool? I’d have suggested that one makes a few polka dot pullovers with the black nicely blending in with the white.

But over time, somehow, we have been taught that one shouldn’t stand out. And this is the case in most institutions starting from school to the working place…and life in general.

Standing out makes you vulnerable. It weakens the crowd. And the crowd does not like to be weak. The outcast is called ‘different’. But it is the outcast who has brought about change in this world, and guess what: made a true difference, by being different! One shouldn’t be different for the sake of being different. Rather, one should strive to recognize what is wrong within the crowd and the way the crowd operates. Keeping an open mind is not always a healthy thing. Lots of crap flies in when it’s not closed.

However, as I was reading an incredible lecture given by a media critic called Neil Postman, we must learn to be ‘crap-detectors’ and see bullshit for what it is: bullshit.

One of the things bringing this concept home to us all is the upcoming US presidential election. Politicians, as a friend of mine pointed out, must lie. If they told the truth, they would never be where they are. I’d prefer to be a black sheep cowering under a tree all by myself, knowing I stand for honesty, than being surrounded by a bunch of liars.

That is precisely what most significant leaders in our history did. They first had to stand alone, before others realized that they ought to follow the one with no crap on his hands…or mouth.

And lastly, my third thought was: whatever happened to the human being as a communal figure? The most communal young people get today is jumping up and down at some rave in some club with a horde of drunk and high people who don’t really care whether you’re there or not. Over the last centuries, with the rapid influence of technology on our lives, we have lost a massive past of our humanity and the way in which we used to interact. But again, as Neil Postman declared, there will always be winners and losers when it comes to a new technological advancement.

Think about it: who on earth is there that you would follow…right to the battlefield…where your life is at stake?!?

The one idea that is so very clear to me with every new day is this: as humans, we would do well to stick together and work things out on a grass root level. In an endless pyramid-structured hierarchy, it is those at the bottom who are indispensable. Power and influence must be used to further the cause of those at the bottom and bring about an equal playing field.

Which is to say: we need more black pullovers to have more black and white polka dot pullovers!