When I was young, I went to three different high schools.  I did make friends, but they weren't extremely close friends.  They were people I worked with and people I went to school with.  I remember wanting to fit in with more people, so sometimes I did things that I didn't really think were right.  One time in particular stands out--I had finished a shift at the fast-food restaurant where I worked, and a couple of co-workers asked me to drive around with them.  I saw no harm in that, so I did.  After a while driving around in the dark got a bit boring, so the kid who owned the truck suggested that we take a stop sign on one of the streets where we were.  We lived in a very small, very remote town, so the chances of getting caught were almost none, so we did.  He pulled up next to the stop sign, and the three of us got out and started rocking it back and forth until we were able to pull it out of the ground, and we threw it in the back of his truck.

And we did that twice more before we were done.  It wasn't something that I would ever plan on doing, or even think about doing on my own, but I wanted to fit in, to be "acceptable" in the eyes of these two peers.  While it was okay doing that when I was caught up in the moment, I felt a great deal of regret later, especially when I thought of what could have happened if someone had driven through an intersection where they should have stopped, and been hit by another car.

And I never did anything with those two again, because fitting in with them had cost me too much of my self, had caused me to compromise some principals that were very important to me.  Nowadays, I would simply say "no way" to anyone who suggested such a thing to me, but then I was still very young and impressionable-- and somewhat lonely--so i simply wanted to fit in, and the cost was rather high.  I knew I had done something wrong, and I didn't want to be doing wrong things just to fit in with someone else.  I didn't ever end up doing anything else with those two, as the fitting in simply wasn't worth the cost.

In like ways, fitting in may cause us to do things like say bad things about other people, especially people who are "different" than us.  Fitting in may cause us to abandon a friend who doesn't fit in, or to neglect tasks and jobs that need to be done.  It can cause us to stay quiet when we know we should speak up, or to say something when silence is much more appropriate.

But I've learned there's another side to fitting in that doesn't have to do with right or wrong--rather, it has to do with boring vs. exciting, tedious vs. stimulating.  I've learned that the more I "fit in" with other people, the more I'm expected to do what they do, and even act as they act.  Fitting in with many people would involve sitting for hours in front of a television, or spending hours doing boring and annoying things.  It might mean going to the mall regularly when I don't really like malls or shopping all that much.  It may mean sitting around and talking about the same things that we talked about yesterday, or last week, or last month.  I've learned that when all is said and done, I don't necessarily even want to fit in with certain groups because the expectations of me in certain situation would be that I would do the same boring stuff that they do, over and over and over again.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with fitting in with someone else or with a group of people, as long as doing so doesn't cause us to compromise our principals and integrity.  Fitting in can be great, giving us a sense of belonging in an isolated world, and company in a lonely world.  I do like fitting in, but only when the cost is a price that I'm completely ready to pay.

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