I recently had the pleasure of driving four of Lou’s favorite clients around the Wine Country on a Saturday.
I don’t do that very often, but these two ladies and their husbands are quite special to Lou, and I was available, so it was a no brainer. Usually, when I’m doing something in Napa that involves a tasting room, I’m sipping on something yummy. But when you’re transporting precious cargo — and the fantastic human beings who purchased said cargo — you need to be sharp and vigilant.
So I was as sober as a judge all day — which made for some excellent people watching!
After the first tasting, I was waiting outside of this very hip restaurant where I snagged these clients a reservation, and I was honestly up to my eyeballs in the best people watching ever. It was a crisp but sunny Spring day, and people were milling around the sweet little town of St. Helena. Everyone was in a chipper mood because, let’s face it — it was a Saturday in the Wine Country!
Life is good!
Anyway. I actually heard this group of girls before I ever saw them. They were all talking at once, and I think it’s safe to say they’d been tasting wine. But when I turned my head to the right, I was actually stunned to see such a large group of young ladies moving toward me in lock-step unison. Setting the collective beauty aside, a gaggle of gals this size was hard to ignore.
As they moved closer to me, I couldn’t help but notice that every single girl in the mix of about 10 girls had on the exact same style of clothing. Every girl was wearing a jumpsuit! And, each jumpsuit was incredibly similar to all of the others: linen-like fabric with a Spring-
My little peabrain was tabulating so quickly as the group of girls started to pass me on my bench, but I managed to finish my calculations just in time to confirm it was true. All 10 girls without exception had on some version of this look. The whole scene was charmingly amusing to me because it was as if each girl in the group got the memo that it was “Spring Jumpsuit Day in the Wine Country!”
[NOTE: For this next part, please remember that I already confessed to
Soon after they passed me, I immediately started shaping an omniscient narrative in my mind where two of the girls — that I named “Hailey” and “Jen” — are talking on the phone the day before their big wine tasting weekend in the Napa Valley:
Hailey: Liiike, what are you wearing on Saturday?
Jen: Liiike…I think I’m gonna wear a linen jumpsuit?
Hailey: Oh, so cuute…
[Haily Inner Monolog] F-
Hailey: Have you ever worn it before?
Jen: No, it’s new. But it’s super cute — I got it at Zara?
[Hailey Inner Monolog] Damn it.
Jen: You were with me when I got it — member? It’s light gray with pink stripes?
Hailey: Oh my god, yass! Soo cute!
[Hailey Inner Monolog] F-yeew. My jumpsuit is waay cuter.
I figure Hailey later confirmed her beliefs that her very similar jumpsuit was “way cuter” after she posted a selfie and compared her “Likes” against Jen’s selfie “Likes.” That’s what sets the standard of “individualism” inside of this scene in my mind anyway! (Sorry. I realize I may have just crossed the line between a sober judge and a snarky one. )
But hold on — there was a guy version of this pre-Wine Country weekend conversation going on, too! Behind this group of young ladies, I spotted about 10 fraternity-looking dudes bringing up the rear. The way this group of guys was dressed made me pretty certain these were college students who were on Spring Break from some other part of the country — because guys in the Bay Area tend to be much better dressers as a rule.
This particular pack of bros was not all wearing the exact same thing, however…there were some similarities. Here’s how I imagine a “pre-game” convo between two guys I named “Hunter” and “Gunner” went down:
Hunter: Do you have to dress up to get into a tasting room, Dude? I’m so not into wine…
Gunner: Nah Dude. I’m just wearing (dumpy ass) shorts.
Hunter: Cool. I’ll just wear my (dumpy ass) jeans then.
(College guys… You’ve gotta love their dumpy asses!)
Once both groups passed me, I found myself chuckling — mostly because what I saw was kind of sweet, but also because it reminded me of how influential your own “tribe” can be in your life. It’s as if you don’t want to stand out too much because it just feels so important in life to fit in. You can, however, take a few risks of opinion or style here or there, but for the most part, the standard is set, and it just works best for some reason to comply to the rules and beliefs of your tribe.
It’s not altogether clear who issues the memo about things like Spring jumpsuits or dumpy ass drawers when it comes to group-think behavior, but there does seem to be a clear consensus of belief that being the same is somehow better than being different.
If I expand these thoughts out beyond the fashion ideas of a group of kids in their early twenties on a Wine Country tasting spree, I do recognize a pattern of alignment in our culture that is very fascinating and certainly familiar to me. It seems like people naturally rally around ideas or causes with some basis of common belief or understanding, or in some cases, a common reality they’ve experienced. Once the similarities of the people in the group are clear, then the group can get larger, and the ideas can become more clarified and defined. Before long, the group-think aspects fully take over, and all of the outward signs of behavior become homogenized into a core expression of the consensus.
Once that happens, it’s almost like the group closes ranks and only allows people who are happy to conform to the group’s ideals to enter into the circle, and now we have groups of individuals who find their most pronounced identity inside of the collective. I recognize this formation because I’ve willingly and unwillingly lived inside of many group-think eco-systems my entire life: my upbringing, the country — and the states — I live in, my education, my gender, my financial standing, my race, my faith…
For the most part, I think all people live inside of a few kinds of group-think circles — even if they’re only members by default, or aren’t doggedly aligned or outwardly passionate about the beliefs of their various tribes. We all just seem to gravitate and collect into groups of “like-aligned” people, and right or wrong, that’s just how our society seems to hum along — in my observation anyway…
And even though I can clearly identify most of my little circles of group-think participation, for the most part, I don’t feel like I thrive in those environments very well over time. I definitely find some version of identity inside of groups that I organically align with, but sometimes, when I really give myself the space to ponder and think, I start to feel like the group is “over-defining” me and I don’t know how to belong anymore — but I also don’t know how to express my real feelings inside of the group without ruffling too many feathers.
So eventually, I start to feel too confined, and that’s when I slowly start to become a quiet outlier.
Please allow me to take it back to my personal feelings about a jumpsuit. I like to think of myself as a fashionable girl — maybe not as fashionable as I used to be, but I care. And I even own two trendy jumpsuits — not from Zara, tho. Now if I got the memo that it was “Spring Jumpsuit Day in the Wine Country,” I’d probably be tempted to comply… But the fact is, jumpsuits are the worst! They might look cute, but they tend to give me a wedgie (in the front and the back) and they’re such a pain when you have to use the bathroom. So honestly, I don’t want to wear a jumpsuit to be like everyone else… That’s just not enough of a reason to put up with how jumpsuits really make me feel.
This must be a genuine part of my personal make-up that extends beyond my feelings about jumpsuits because on some level, even when I do believe in a collectively held belief — like inside of my faith, for example — I’m never very comfortable just going all-in without really evaluating how I truly feel about things. I will acknowledge that I am a compliant person in some ways, and when I do decide I believe in something, I can totally dig my heels in and stand strong. And, I can be very convicted.
But in other ways, I can’t seem to snuff out my need to tease out my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings to the very edges so I can explore for myself what’s really out there. I think that’s important to do…even though expressing my real thoughts and feelings can be incredibly difficult sometimes — especially inside of certain circles that I mix in.
It’s just that the consequences of going against the group-think that I always thought I aligned with can be super tricky, and, it can make me worry that I’ll end up being an outcast that no one wants to claim! But I believe that’s always the risk when you’re an active thinker. And quite frankly, I’ve only recently started to really ponder more deeply than I used to, and it just feels right for me to start living a more examined life…
Anyway…
I’m definitely in a season of my life where everything I think is up for consideration because I want to know why I think the things I think as much as I want to know what it is I think! I get lots of “memos” in my daily life that identify the consensus of beliefs in every circle I move in or am around, but I am very curious these days about the author of some of the bossiest memos that cross over into my awareness.
I guess I just want the Truth to be what sets my heart in motion and links me to myself and to others and to God. But very often, I feel like “group-think consensus” sets the highest standard when seeking human alignment and connection in our culture — because honestly, I don’t see a whole lot of people finding a sense of consensus and belonging inside of a single standard of Truth these days. The “Truth” often seems to be whatever the various groups around me want it to be…which makes it so much more difficult to spot for myself.
But all of this does make me wonder: Are there other people out there like me who are feeling the pressure to wear a jumpsuit and peep-toed booties when something else might fit so much better?
