“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm
Likeability was, almost, everything in high school. Likeability has continued to be, almost, everything in life after high school. Normative relatability was gold then. It still is now.
My first year of work after leaving high school, I immediately understood that we never leave high school. It goes on for the rest of our lives.
We may trade in school schedules for work schedules and school grounds for campuses and offices, but it’s all the same thing. There were things we all knew we had to do to be more equal than others and that is still the case.
Those who cared enough to play the game and were good enough to succeed at it, could have ‘everything’. Some were happy once they had ‘everything’, others still weren’t. But those who didn’t care enough to participate faded into the background and had to accept that they would not be as equal as others.
Their overall self-esteem seemed to depend on how well they accepted where they fell on the social hierarchy.
To some degree, it still does. And, in high school as well as afterward, the most interesting people are usually the ones in the background. But they rarely seem to realise just how interesting they are.
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