Divergence and Aloha

As the hour-long journey on the train is about to take off, a drove of people with ages ranging from 20 to 50 walks in. I see one in an earflap winter hat with the capital letters P H I S H across the back. Ah. A Phish concert recently let out.

The oldest of the bunch that reside in the carriage I chose to ride in begins to drunkenly sing (more like loudly yell) a Phish song. I don't hate it yet. It's just one song.

It is not just one song. It is 1:35am and they have been doing this since before the train started moving at 1:09.

Another older man, maybe in his early 40's, walks from an attached carriage into ours. I think he might tell them to be quiet. Instead, he begins yelling about how the musicians in Phish are "THE BEST MUSICIANS IN THE WORLD". His diction is so aggressive that spit is coming out of and also falling off of his lips as he speaks.

He decides to calm down and talk to two younger guys that also went to the concert. He asks them what grade they are in at high school. Funny guy, I tell you. The boys correct him and let him know that they're in college. He asks where and one responds with Stamford, to which he smugly replies "Okay, alright" as if to say he approves, and of course his approval is important to these boys who do not know him. The other says he goes to Wash U. He's less impressed, likely because he doesn't know anything about it. A seemingly accurate slice of the Phish demographic pie is represented in this train.

This is the New York train to Stamford. The New Yorker is coming out in me because I feel so inclined to shut these people down in my aggressive New York way, but then I think of how far I am from being a New Yorker. The couple sitting next to me are having a conversation with each other and do not seem phased by the noise around them whatsoever. They are New Yorkers. The concert-goers who see this train as a continuation of their fun night, rather than simply as a form of transportation home - they are New Yorkers. I have forgotten to preemptively shift my weight in anticipation of a stop on the subway. I am not a New Yorker.

Sometimes I feel like one. When I am driving somewhere that I want to get to quickly, and I can comfortably weave around cars, I feel like a New Yorker. When 9/11 is discussed, I feel like a New Yorker. I feel a sense of pride in being from New York.

I just read Divergent. The protagonist, Tris, is equally apt for three of five factions - something that is virtually unheard of, as most people fit nearly into one. As I was reading, I really resonated with her. I feel divergent sometimes, too.

"Where are you from?" is a more complicated question for me than for most. I was born in one place and lived there for 8 years, lived here in New York for the next 10 years, went to college elsewhere, got married and moved across the country to California, and now I live in Hawaii. I'm not sure which place should be my response.

Divergence isn't easy. It makes Tris uncomfortable, but it also makes the people around her uncomfortable. She isn't sure of her place and she never feels totally at home anywhere. She has to make the choice between betraying her family or betraying herself. Coming "home" to New York reminds me that, although I love Hawaii (and I do, more than any other place I've been), parts of me will always be in places that host my family and friends. Staying in the same place and being surrounded by the people you already know and love is comfortable. Divergence is not.

I am not English enough to English people, New York enough to New Yorkers, or Hawaiian enough at all. I feel somewhat like an outsider no matter where I am, like Tris. Tris is not selfless enough in Abnegation or cruel enough in Dauntless, but she has to make a choice to define herself by one.

Though it may be scary and uncomfortable, divergence is also powerful. Tris, because she is divergent, is able to resist a type of mind-control in the novel. I am happy that I ventured out of New York. I am glad that I have lived in many places because having less blind allegiance to one location makes me more open to experiencing new ones. It may make me and other people uncomfortable that I do not fit neatly into one 'faction', but I have found people and places and food that I love, and ideas that would have never crossed my mind, by leaving the place that felt comfortable for so many years.

I teach students who are a part of a military family. I am in awe of their divergence. Many of them have lived in five different places already, and they are only 12 or 13. They adapt to new environments, taking pieces of each place with them, with no choice but to be open to a new experience and a new culture. They make new friends every time they move and are prepared to move on when the time comes. They are more prepared than I think they know for what they will have to encounter later in life: for the "aloha" that means both goodbye and hello.