This is the second part in a mini series of podcasts looking at Blessed are the Weird, by Jacob Nordby. Last week we started by looking at what it means to be a blessed weirdian. This episode is titled ‘Misfits’, as we continue to think about ways in which gentle rebels and creative misfits find themselves naturally placed in the margins of the mainstream.
Are you ready to embrace the joy of not fitting in?
All Kinds of Weird
I’ve been puzzling over a question about different types of misfit and weird. And this was almost serendipitously augmented by a trip to the cinema to watch Joker. The day before I had read a rather apt quote by G.K. Chesterton…

“Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, “That man will get on; he believes in himself…”
…I said to him, “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. And I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”
…He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. “Yes, there are,” I retorted, “and you of all men ought to know them…
Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcott: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell’ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus.” – G.K. Chesterton
The Madness of Self-Belief
Hanwell was referring to ‘St Barnard’s Hospital‘.
*Oddly enough, I discovered that Hanwell was used as a location to film the 1989 Batman film in which Jack Nicholson played the Joker. A funny yet unimportant coincidence.
I have been reflecting on ‘weirdos’ and ‘misfits’. How the words are used, almost interchangeably with ideas such as ‘aloof’, ‘introvert’, ‘loner’. We often see them in reports about the lone figure attacker who ‘didn’t fit in’.
I’ve felt a sense of responsibility to distinguish these ideas. Because we’re talking about different ways of relating to oneself and the world around you.
One is a natural, heart and soul full way of experiencing. The gifts of sensitivity, gentleness, and introversion, as a natural way of feeling, energising, and relating to the world.
The other is resentful, full of bitterness and driven by a failed desire to fit in with some aspired external group, force, or way of life.
This is where Joker sits. An aspiring comedian who doesn’t understand comedy. Who isn’t funny. And who can’t stand being laughed at.