I suspect that had Augustine grown up in Manchester in the 1980s, he would have been a diehard fan of The Smiths. Many of the band’s songs, driven by Morrissey’s forlorn persona, explore feelings of alienation, melancholy, and longing. The narrator of “The Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” sees the world as a forsaken place where estrangement from its relentless barbarism seems inevitable. The narrator of “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” is broken and restless, aching to find some ultimate source of peace. “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side” expresses the raw pain of feeling like an incurable misfit.
Augustine as a misfit is a powerful theme in Catherine Conybeare’s biography Augustine the African. Conybeare emphasizes that Augustine was African, not Roman in the sense of being a native Italian. He spoke Latin, but he could not hide his accent. He was insecure about his heritage and wrote and thought as an outsider in the Christian world. He never felt at home in Italy, where he spent five years of his life. Most of his life was spent in what is now Algeria and Tunisia. Feeling out of place in a world dominated by Rome had a powerful influence on how he approached his faith and argued with others.
In modern parlance, we might say Augustine had a chip on his shoulder. Feeling embattled can make us surly and unpleasant, but it can also give us an advantage: We never get too comfortable in the tribe. We never become complacent, drinking the same Kool-Aid as everyone else inside the same silo. We may share some beliefs with these people, but we remain inclined to push back against their conventions.
In some cases, our perennial identity as the misfit may sharpen our critical thinking skills. We benefit from what might be called Outsider Consciousness: a heightened awareness of society’s assumptions, contradictions, and unwritten rules that develops from living within a culture without feeling fully accepted by it. Belonging can make us feel cozy, but that comfort sometimes comes at the price of conformity and complacency. Estrangement, on the other hand, keeps us uncomfortable enough that our default setting becomes one of scrutiny.
Feeling like an outsider reminds me of 1973, when I returned to California from Nairobi, Kenya, and attended Earl Warren Junior High. The drinking and pot smoking at Earl Warren were a sharp contrast to my life at Nairobi International School, where I had played with the British version of G.I. Joe dolls, called Action Man.
One afternoon, four boys approached me, and their leader, Kent Daniels, said he wanted to share a joke. He proceeded to tell a long, tedious story that made no sense, after which he and his friends laughed heartily. I stood there and said, “I don’t get it. It’s not funny to me.”
Kent patted me on the back and said, “You passed the test. We wanted to see if you’d laugh just to go along with the group. We wanted to make sure you weren’t a chump.”
By refusing to laugh at something I didn’t find funny, I had established credibility. I was accepted by the group precisely because I hadn’t tried too hard to please them. Kent and his friends were smart. They didn’t want just anyone in their fold. A person had to be intelligent, adhere to an honor code, and perhaps bring something of value through his Outsider Consciousness.
To this day, I remain fascinated that Kent and his friends had devised a way of testing another person’s authenticity. That I passed their test remains a badge of pride. I suppose Morrissey would have appreciated the occasion, though he might have found something more tragic in it than I did. After all, I was simply a twelve-year-old boy who refused to laugh at a joke that wasn’t funny. Never was. Never would be.
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