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I still remember the evening a respected sage described people like me as misfits and losers.

Of course, he couldn’t have known that this was how I identified, but I challenged him nonetheless, because I didn’t think it was very kind.

I suspect a lot of people would describe me this way. I would too, because it’s true.

I’ve never fitted in anywhere. And if you were to compare me to my successful siblings and peers, you could only consider me to be losing in some sense.

I think even our kids would describe me this way. Indeed, in rage, they would pronounce me not normal. And there I would agree with them, because that’s true too.

Actually, it has pretty much been the defining feature of my life, for as long as I remember.

I was known as a misfit by those boys at school who would follow me around every lunchtime and mimic my every move.

At college, I had other epithets, but it amounted to much the same, as eyes followed me around wherever I went, denouncing me without pause.

It carried on at university, into the workplace, and out onto the street, forever reminding me of my place in the world.

I guess the reason I get so blue sometimes is because my home was my sanctuary. But now it’s shared with judgemental teenagers, forever astute at identifying the outsider.

It was easy for the not-so-wise sufi to characterise people like me as misfits and losers who would never be able to survive in the real world.

It would take another kind of empathy altogether to come down to our level, and walk in our shoes.

It might be said that people incapable of accommodating the misfit and the loser are missing something.

Who’s to know what contribution they might make to the world, if only the world could make room for them.

But I guess we will never know. Because, in the end, we are all just misfits and losers.