A couple of years ago, I had a girlfriend. When she got interested in something, she got in head first, dicing like it was a matter of life or death. She’d dig deeper in to the area or subject then people who’d been doing it for years, in matter of days.
For one period, she got in to roller derby. It seemed to come from out of the blue. I’d been getting myseld around on inlines for a couple of years, and she din’t even have a pair to join me on. All of that aside, she was starting roller-derby in a local team. She bought all of the equipment straight away, even befor her first practice. Her mom and I both advised her to try the sport out a couple of times before going in to it economically. She wouldn’t listen. She bought new everything. New roller skates, new helmet, new protection. She spent thousands of kronas on one single order, getting not only the basic stuff, but the real deal. I’d never seen her so determined and happy.
She went to practice a handful of times. She was super happy about it the first two times she went. Then the fun was gone. It turned out roller derby was quite a tough sport. Of course, she knew that when she started, having watched hours of it on youtube. So she stopped. I think she made it to four practises in total.
What I didn’t understand at the time is that she never really was interested in roller derby. She wasn’t even interested in roller skating. She was interested in being the type of person who does roller derby. The identity and the tribe of the sport.
What broke her wasn’t the tribe — they liked her. What really got to her was executing on the activity that the tribe came together for. The identity came at a price — doing roller derby. She wasn’t prepared to pay it.
That happens everywhere, all the time. But not always do people have the courage to drop out. They keep to the tribe regardless at times.
There are two possible outcomes when that happens. Either the individual adapts to the group, or the group to the individual. Had my ex stayed, she’d either have had to become interested in roller derby, or get the group interested in some other activity. Either you change or the culture does. It’s usually the former.