It occurred to me the other day that I’m afraid to say, that is, feel mightily awkward in saying…never thought I would be…Lisa Simpson.
Lisa spins firmly in her own orbit of beliefs, academics and food choices. She’s unlike her parents and siblings. If it weren’t for the outrageously strong family resemblance one might wonder if she were adopted. Lisa is unflappably Lisa, even in the face of overwhelming 2nd grade peer pressure. She’s not the rope-jumping pink fluffy bling of her counterparts. She’s a Buddhist vegetarian who exists entirely to play the sax, defend those without a voice and drag humanity kicking and screaming into the Age of Universal Enlightenment.
Those who know her really don’t. Lisa is a citizen of the Earth, yet doesn’t fit in at all in her hometown. It can confidently be said that no one is quite like Lisa Simpson.
And what came to mind the other day was this: I’m quite unlike my parents and siblings, although it can be blamed on the adoption. No one in my family had a great interest in school. They couldn’t wait to graduate and never look back. Education is the atmosphere surrounding my world and without it I wither and die on the vine.
Since very small I’ve look to the skies, as if expecting to find someone up there. So far I haven’t seen eyes looking back. In kindergarten I dreamt one night of being an ethnographic anthropologist on a South Pacific island, living among and studying the locals…that were subsequently attacked by a giant lima bean monster, but we won’t discuss that. In 1st grade my invisible friend looked like and had the same name of the closest living person in my present-day life. In 3rd I was so familiar with Einstein’s theories of relativity that I taught high school students in my neighborhood…and was horrified that by high school they didn’t know them already! By 4th I was teaching myself to fly, with tremendous hope of one day holding a pilot’s position. In 7th I designed spacecraft and conducted advanced studies of the natural world. From that point on I shot into the realm of independent wildlife observations
And with art as an underlying theme in my life, it won out at university and I received a degree in painting. I’ve picked up awards for poetry and essays and built a novel just to see if I could write something that long. Well, it turned out that I could and did another to see if the first was a fluke.

No one in my family or grew up with joined my endeavors. They didn’t understand why I’d want to waste my time with that nonsense. I was alone, disconnected from what they wanted in life. In fact recently I asked a dear friend of the same academic cloth, “do you ever look up?” She was surprised that I’d ask such a silly question. Moments like those remind me of what Lisa Simpson must feel like.
 
I hold out great hope for Lisa finding her home among others who’ve received years of blank stares, question marks and silly laughs. A home where like-minded individuals from across the planet collect from their unique perspectives to somehow see the world as one.