The Island Of Misfit Toys.
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Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s in the United States, pretty much every kid would be familiar with the Island of Misfit Toys.
It was from the Claymation television feature Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and it was a place where toys, full of love, but unloved, came to live — perfectly good toys who weren’t like the rest and didn’t fit in.
Long lost since the broadcast of that wonderful Christmas special, I recently rediscovered this wonderful place in the most unexpected way.
I spent the month of February with an amazing group of people who gathered around to write. And write they did. They wrote about life, love, loss and laughter.
They bore their souls in digital print, and shared their journeys about being a creative in an uncreative world. It felt familiar, almost like déjà vu. It felt like I knew these people whom I had never met before.
I was at home with strangers from all over the world. Why was this? What was going on inside me? And then it hit me. I felt like I’d landed on the Island of Misfit Toys.
The writing group I was a part of was the Write Yourself Alive (WYA), a 30-day writing workshop put on by Andréa Balt and Tyler Knott Gregson.
I have never been a part of anything like this before, from a writing perspective, but as the days progressed, I began to see an unfolding of something greater than a place to write.
As people began to share from the heart, others would offer words of encouragement, affirmation and identification.
This ragtag bunch of lonely artists were beginning to see that they were not alone, that there were others, out there, who were just like them.
Almost as if emerging from an apocalyptic wasteland after years of isolation, the artists began to come alive with creative expression. And what beautiful expressions they were.
There was a synergy released by the unification of artistic hearts, one that did not exist prior to these people coming together for WYA, people who needed to know they were not alone.
In the United States, less than 2% of the population are artists. That is a very small number to draw from when looking for friends.
Artists are often misunderstood, criticized for not wanting real jobs, and taken for granted for their contribution to our culture and world. Artists find the beauty in the world and bring it to our attention.
The poets, storytellers, songwriters, painters (either by canvas or camera) and sculptors make our lives better, yet history reveals the often tormented creatives who struggled to find acceptance from others.
WYA set out to awaken the artist in us all, and it ended up awakening a community of people who long for connection, affirmation, and solidarity. People became friends almost overnight.
There was such a resonance of heart that walls of insecurity fell like shattered glass as people were understood and seen.
Suddenly, the isolation we all felt melted away into a warm ray of spring sunlight in the form of so many just like us, becoming friends.
What I took away from WYA was not just a passion to write, but a strong desire to connect with others like me, who need as much encouragement as I need to keep at this longing to write.
The world is shrinking. Community used to include people who lived on the same block. Nowadays, we know less about our neighbors in close proximity, but we can find community with people around the world.
Jesus once said, “Love your neighbor,” to which someone asked, “Who is my neighbor?” His reply was in the form of a story of a man who was in need and the only person who would help was an outsider.
We outsiders, we artists, are neighbors from a far off land. We know each other because we know ourselves.
We may be strange, but we are not strangers because we walk to the same rhythm, bleed the same blood, and long to leave this world a better place.
The Island of Misfit Toys has a new meaning for me. The poet John Donne wrote, “No man is an island.” We are all part of the whole, the community of the artistic. We are the oddballs, idealists, the tormented and the forgotten.
But we all belong here. This is where we fit. This is where we find each other. This is where we remind each other that we are not alone, that we have something to offer, that we are wanted.
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Jim Wern is a renaissance man in a modern world; a spiritual traveler, searching for vestiges of the divine in humanity and imparting seeds of hope in a desolate world. He is a husband, father, friend, mentor, creative, tech geek, amateur writer, photographer and chef. His ramblings can be found at his website. He lives in sunny Southern California with his beautiful wife of 31 years.
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