Smallville Season 1: Fitting In (early access)

The moral case for fitting in with other people.

People don't like to be singled out.

It's an incredibly uncomfortable feeling for other people to point out how different you are and the ways in which you don't seem like the rest of them. Being treated as if you're different makes you feel bad. Largely because you don't like to think of yourself as strange or outside the normal ideas of what people think. You want people to see you as one of them. Part of the crowd like everybody else. There's a powerful feeling in the idea that other people want to be around you and do things with you. When they don't, you end up spending a lot of time alone. Something that feels even worse over time the more you spend time alone.

As a result, it feels better to try and be with other people. To give people the sense that they don't have any reason to think you should be singled out in any way. Find ways to blend in and make yourself almost unrecognizable from anyone else. Especially because those who are different become much easier to spot. So does what happens to them when you do. They get left out and you can see how that goes wrong. They become what you don't want to be. Nowhere is this more obvious than in high school. Becoming part of the in crowd is never more important than in high school. So how do people actually do it? When everyone is so worried about fitting in, how do you know when you're doing it correctly?

“Clark, I know you're upset but it's normal.”

“Normal? How about this? Is this normal? I didn't dive in after Lex's car, it hit me at 60 miles an hour. Does that sound normal to you? I'd give anything to be normal.”