green acres

lessons on not fitting in

I’m always halfway out the door before I remember to turn the TV on for Delilah. Despite having lived exclusively in apartments, any sound from the hallway sends her barreling over the edge. The TV keeps her sane.

It usually reverts to a weird, old movie channel. (Weird because it only airs Hatari! and Roman Holiday. Don’t watch Hatari!)

On Thursday, Hatari! played again. Out of fear that Delilah would try and capture me as if I were a rhinoceros and she was John Wayne, I started roaming through the channels.

When I saw platinum blonde hair and a pink, ostrich feather-covered figure, I stopped. Eva Gabor. Green Acres.

(♪Green Acres is the place to be. Farm living is the life for me♪)

I’ve written before about my love affair with the Gabor sisters and how it stems from a delightful group of geriatrics and their rigid television viewing habits. So, there’s no need to further examine why I’m drawn to Eva - her flashy wardrobe, sizeable diamonds, laughter, and lightness.

A flash of her across the screen and I’m small again, watching with rapt attention.

If you’ve never seen Green Acres, the plot is simple: A New York City attorney, Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert), longs for a life as a genteel farmer. He convinces his socialite wife, Lisa Douglas (Gabor), to give up their Park Avenue apartment and move to the bizarre community of Hooterville. From there, chaos and absurdity drive the plot.

There are square-shaped eggs, a pig that attends elementary school, and brick-hard hotcakes. It’s escapism at its finest.

Watching this week, I noticed something that whisked past me as a kid: Despite her refusal to assimilate into farm or “tradwife” culture, Lisa Douglas fits in far better than her husband.

She wears her couture nightgowns to feed the chickens. Has little interest in learning how to cook or clean. Maintains her high level of vanity. And, everyone loves her. But it’s not because she’s beautiful and charming. No, it’s deeper than that.

Lisa realizes far before her husband that the best way to adjust to their new life is by clinging to what and who she knows best: herself. And because she never attempts to alter her likes and wants to this “new” culture, she becomes the more levelheaded and ultimately the most accepting of the duo.

The townspeople are zany and unpredictable. And so is Lisa. She looks out of place but she’s speaking their language: BE YOU.

The other women don’t begrudge her for her domestic failures because “that’s just Lisa.” And in turn, she doesn’t sneer at her neighbors for raising a pig as their child. (Remember Arnold Ziffel?)

But the town can smell the fakeness, the performity, on Oliver. They mark him an outsider. He clings tenaciously to logic (which the town decries), sputters, and despairs as he sees his dream life rapidly slip out of his fingers. It’s the Law of Reverse Effort: the harder he tries, the worse it gets. With each step towards assimilation, the deeper the canyon grows.

But I feel for Oliver. It’s normal, isn’t it? Wanting to be accepted. Longing to feel at home. Yearning for that nod that says, “You’re one of us. Stay.”

So we try to fit in. We say yes most of the time. And we’re as good as one can possibly be.

We jump through every hoop and wear all the right masks, but our efforts still aren’t quite good enough.

Then, we’re sick of trying to fit in. We’re resentful. We just want to feel like we belong the way we truly are.

I know what it’s like to ache for belonging. So do you.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned over these past few years, it’s that acting how I thought I must has only left me cheated and drained.

I self-lomotomized. Maybe this time. Just stay good enough.

And as I tied myself in knots trying to keep up the performance, all I wanted was for things to go back to the way they were. To land on something familiar. To get my bearings. To feel at home.

I still have a long way to go but I'm mostly back to where I need to be. Not to the address I left when I was eighteen, but at home with myself, which is where I always belonged.

Everybody tries to fit in because we desperately want to feel at home wherever we are. But fitting in will never get you home.

You won’t be home until you inhabit the world as the real you.

And no matter how hard we try, none of us ever really feel like we fit in because we’re all working towards this imaginary state of communal perfection.

And the other bizarre reality is that many of us don’t actually like the people that we perceive to be perfect anyway. I find them one-dimensional, difficult to connect with, and, often, find it hard to trust them because I’m suspicious about what’s really going on behind the polished exterior. And no doubt others have felt this way about me.

In trying so hard to fit in, I can’t help but feel we’re inadvertently missing out on connection by holding back our most interesting bits from the world.

I enjoy nothing more than being let into the world of another complex, imperfect, fascinating human being. It’s interesting, it feels like a total privilege, it makes me feel strongly connected to them and it gives me permission to reveal my own warped side.

What would happen if we assumed we were already good? And stopped trying to conform to a mold. Shared the messy middle. And like Lisa, become experts on our own lives.

Let’s learn what it means to bloom. It must be better. We were designed to take up space and plant deep roots - to be wholly and unapologetically our own.

I’m basking in the sun and waiting for you. All of you.

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Fun Fact Corner:

1. Eddie Albert's love of farming and the environment extended far beyond Green Acres. He was a founding member of Earth Day - it’s no coincidence that it falls on his birthday. 

2. Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor saved Twister. When the game first came out, it was a flop! Until Carson invited Gabor on to demonstrate how to play the party game. Sales skyrocketed the next day.

   

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When you click that ❤️, my heart explodes with joy.