The Third Space: A Non-Conformist's Guide to The Universe

When it seems there's only left or right, this way or that way, the third space adds depth instead of dogma.

You’re in for a treat today, Black Sheep readers: an excerpt of a book by someone with an incredible life story and equally incredible perspective: Zander Keig. He’s given us permission to share some of his new book—The Third Space—which details how he’s developed a nuanced, curious, and non-conformist approach to life.

Zander is one of the few people I’ve met who embodies the principles he supports. He’s the kind of person you can tell has wisdom that most of us could learn from. At a time when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by the hostility and narrow-mindedness I often confront online, I started reading Zander’s book and felt reconnected to the ideals I care for most. I hope you’ll find his earnest, conversational, and wise words as useful as I do. — Salomé

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When I was six years old, before I started first grade, my mother took me to the doctor to get the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella. Unfortunately, it was a bad batch, and I contracted rubella, the German measles. The virus went into my brain and caused some swelling, called encephalitis. I spent a few months in the hospital.

During that time, I was in a medically induced coma for two weeks because I was having seizures, and they were worried they would destroy the muscles in my body. When I regained consciousness after the coma, I was paralyzed on the left side of my body, and I was blind in my left eye. So my parents and the doctors had to figure out what the next steps would be.

Back at school two years later, I was teased because I had a limp from the paralysis that I had overcome at this point. Not only was I told that I had an “Arizona accent” when I moved to California, but since the left side of my face had been paralyzed, it affected the way I spoke. I was bullied, I was teased, and I was pushed around both physically and verbally. After about two years, I decided I had enough. I started fighting back against the bullies, and other kids around me noticed. They would approach me and say, “Hey, so-and-so is picking on me. They’re pushing me, and they’re calling me names.”

I would go over to those bullies, and I would bully them because I didn’t want other kids to have to experience the kind of bullying I had experienced. It tears down your sense of self, and it destroys your spirit. When we treat people that way, especially children, it can have a lifelong impact on their sense of being in the world as they go through life. 

Years later, I was telling someone that story, and they gave me the nickname of “Robin Hood bully.” I have to tell you, I have never really outgrown that. To this day, I consider myself the Robin Hood bully because I do not tolerate bullies. I don’t care if it’s in the workplace, in my neighborhood, among my social network, on television, or in Congress; it doesn’t matter. I don’t take kindly to bullies.

It’s important to note that up until the age of 39, I was a woman. Now I’m a trans man. It was 18 years ago that I began the process of medically transitioning. During my middle school years, I wasn’t in a traditional middle school. I was actually sent away to a group home for delinquent girls. It was an all-girls residential school. I was 14 years old and at a point in life where I was struggling with the transition from childhood to adolescence. A childhood that I didn’t really get to live because I was sick for so much of it. But like a child, I was an optimist, and I’m still an optimist. I believed that people were inherently good, life has its positives, and things have a way of working out. I still hold that belief.

Furthermore, in my late teens, I ended up in a relationship with a woman who was very abusive, physically and mentally. It destroyed me more than anything else in my life up to that point. After two years, I was looking for a way to escape. The options I provided to myself were: suicide, joining the military, or committing a heinous crime that would send me away to prison, so I’d never have to see her again. It was really drastic, but I felt like I was at the end of my rope. In some ways, I didn’t have the protective factors or the protective layers that kept me from entering into that kind of relationship. I just fell right into it because I lacked the awareness to recognize the signs and traits associated with such people.

However, I made it through and ended up going into the military. I completed basic training, which lasted 12 weeks, rather than the usual 10 weeks. I did the third week of basic training three times. What that means is that I failed, and then I failed again. And why did I fail? Because I was rebellious and being defiant towards my commanding officer, they kept reverting me, pushing me back, to a new company. I finally ended up in the third company, and I had a very stern but kind drill instructor. I was 20 years old, and everyone else was 18 or 19. Despite my issues, he recognized I had leadership qualities, so he gave me the benefit of the doubt and made me a company officer. I spent the rest of my time in basic training without a single infraction.

Along the way, people believed in me and gave me the benefit of the doubt. This gave me something to hold on to for a better possibility for myself in the future.

I have faced many challenges, and I’ve overcome them, and a lot of it is due to meditation, mindfulness, and a few people believing in me and giving me different opportunities.

But I’ve also done it by following a path that offers a “third space.” For example, I’m not a theist or an atheist. I’m a non-theist. I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. I’m an Independent. I’ve walked this path my entire life, always finding that middle way, the middle space.

Even before I started my medical transition, whenever I went to an event where they would divide the room into men and women, I would always stand in the middle of the room. I would assert that I was going to stay in the middle of the room, and anyone who wanted to join me could. I just insisted that there was likely a middle way in every situation I found myself in.

I’ve been able to figure out from navigating this middle path that it attracts negative attention from those who take sides; the left and the right, the believers and the non-believers. As a result, I’ve had to find ways to create a protective shield around myself. I’ve done that by learning how to manage the strong reactions that are coming from people through developing emotion regulation. I’ve learned how to stand still in situations where people are furious with me for something that I’ve said and just be in that space without it impacting me. That’s called distress tolerance. I’ve also learned how to navigate difficult conversations with people applying conflict management techniques, that bring people out of debate and into dialogue.

I’ve learned that life is inevitably going to be filled with challenges that are bound to affect us physically and psychologically. I want to share with you how to learn to do what I’ve done. For example, how to regulate emotions, tolerate distress, mitigate conflict, and manage stress. I’ve learned that the world is not going to change to meet my needs. I’m not saying we have to change ourselves entirely to meet the needs of society. However, we can find this third space, and discover what we do and don’t want to change about ourselves, and then strengthen ourselves, so we can walk that path and not be destroyed by people’s response to it.

Let’s talk about the third space within the context of defiance.

The third space is for people who think differently or have questions or curiosity about things but don’t automatically follow the script their family, religion, society, or culture handed to them that says, “This is how you must behave. This is what you have to think, and this is what you should believe.”

A lot of people don’t subscribe to the cultural, social, religious, and familial scriptures. We’re not conscripted into all of these things.

I think that the third space is where you can come to catch a breath and explore, investigate, learn, and question. It’s okay to do all those things there. You don’t have some minister telling you, you can’t question the orthodoxy of the religion. You don’t have some social justice warrior telling you you can’t question the narrative your community is pushing on social media. Furthermore, you can come to this third space, this safe space, as people call it. Or perhaps it’s the brave space, whatever it is. It’s this liminal space where you come together. It’s coming together as individuals to test ideas and share them, to look for new ideas and concepts. 

I read a book called The Cultural Creatives about 20 years ago, when it came out, by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson. It was about a group of people called “cultural creatives.” Very interesting. It’s when people are in this space of being able to think, question, have curiosity, research, and investigate. From there, you can develop an entirely new system for yourself, a value system. You can develop a new project that you want to work on. You can find people who have different perspectives from you. Then collaborate and bring together all of your ideas to create something amazing. It can be a project, service, program, activity, or event. You don’t get stuck in groupthink, where everyone just agrees with each other.

Rarely does someone want to be the one person in the group to say, “Yeah, I don’t know if that’ll work,” or, “I don’t really like that idea.” People are afraid to do that. People are scared of speaking out. Striking out on their own. I think real defiance is voicing dissent, and this third space is the place where you can express disagreement without the typical negative consequences. There may still be consequences stemming from which group of people you let come into the third space. However, in the third space, there should be fairly minimal, if any, negative consequences for being a dissenter.