Buying In - (Page 26) 26 rob walker home situation,” he told me somewhat blandly. Growing up, he was “a nerd,” he continued. “I didn’t know any of the cool kids.” He could not figure out how to fit in; he was not a joiner. “I wanted to be a ninja,” he added. Apart from the ninja bit, I think Templeton’s basic dilemma is an easy one to understand. Here’s one way to think about it. When I was in grade school, we watched a lot of films. Perhaps they were a relatively easy way to quiet the children down for a while. But remembering this period as an adult, I’m struck by the realization that those films all had one of two themes. One was: Deep down, each of us is different, unique, and special. The other was: Deep down, we are all just the same. For years I shared this observation, for laughs, before it finally occurred to me that this was no joke. In fact, it articulated what is more or less the fundamental tension of modern life. We all want to feel like individuals. We all we want to feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves. And resolving that tension is what the Desire Code is all about. outlaws and outcasts So back to Ed Templeton. Templeton took up the skateboard in middle school, in the mid-1980s, largely because “I didn’t have this father figure around who was going to kick my ass if I did something wrong,” he explained. “I noticed early on that a lot of kids who were into skateboarding were from broken homes.” His fellow skaters were “outcast kids,” he continued, and there was an “outlaw aspect” to what they were doing.
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