Low diatribe

When I was three, I was the Universe. When I was four, my Brother and Sister were born, and I learned competition.

Twins. Suddenly I wasn't the center anymore. I was one of three, competing for attention, space, identity. Or rather, the perception of scarcity started to grow. Resources that felt infinite when I was the only one now felt limited.

As a freshman in high school, I remember asking a girl if I could borrow one of her Cure tapes. I'd seen a video on MTV and wanted to hear more. She launched into a seven-minute tirade about how The Cure had seven albums and a live EP and she really couldn't begin to imagine where to start someone who had no previous The Cure knowledge.

That's gatekeeping. Not malicious, maybe. But effective at keeping people out.

She didn't lend me the tape. I ended up buying it. It turns out, there's nothing preventing you from walking around some gates.

But I learned something else from that interaction. I learned that you could protect what mattered to you by making it hard for others to access. I learned that in a world where everything gets shared, having something exclusive — something that was yours and not everyone else's — made it feel more special. And testing people's knowledge was a way to determine who deserved access to that special thing.

Later, I started quizzing my Brother on the bands he said he liked. Making him prove his fandom. Testing whether he really knew the songs, the albums, the deep cuts. As if his enjoyment of the music I loved somehow diminished my claim to it.

Exclusivity felt special, but it was lonely. Enjoying something in isolation has its place, but sharing the experience expands it. I didn't understand that then. Years of potential connection sacrificed to protect something that would have been better shared.

The day I left for college, I stopped. Just like that. The perceived competition for resources disappeared when I moved out, and so did the gatekeeping. We started going to shows together. Sharing discoveries. It didn't matter who introduced whom to a band — we just enjoyed the music together.

Now he's the first person I want to share new music with. Many of my current favorites came from him. The complete reversal: from gatekeeper to eager sharer. His discovery doesn't diminish mine — it enriches it. That's what abundance looks like.

But I can't get back those years. That's the cost of gatekeeping.

Tech culture taught me the same pattern, just with different stakes. "You're not a real developer if you don't know [obscure framework]." "Have you read [canonical text]?" "Name three [things] if you're really into [thing]." The constant testing instead of teaching. Protecting territory instead of expanding community.

I encountered it at every stage. And I participated in it. Not just with my Brother, but in professional spaces where I should have known better.

In my very first job after college as a system administrator, I was working with an even more junior colleague — I had maybe two years on him in age and experience. Barely anything. But those two years were in the exact same role he was now occupying, which somehow made me feel like I had authority to test him. I found myself randomly quizzing him about obscure tech. I didn't intend it in a judgy way — it was just subconscious expression of the brotherly habit I'd built. But it suddenly felt weird in the workplace. My moment of clarity. I caught myself mid-pattern and shifted. Those quizzes became random poetic waxings about obscure tech in an attempt to spark a common interest instead of testing his knowledge.

But I also learned to recognize it when it was happening to me.

Decades later when I started working at the Client, I was pairing with a colleague at the beginning of his career. He had three years of experience — all of it in this role, his first job after school. We were practicing the kind of pair programming where one person writes a test, passes the keyboard, the other writes code to make it pass, then writes the next test and passes it back. Back and forth, building together.

His tests started becoming obtuse. Convoluted. I assumed it was just his style — maybe a bit flowery, but harmless. Then he threw out a challenge that triggered something. Pattern recognition kicked in. My inner guide: "You're not my gatekeeper."

I saw it clearly. He was testing me to see if I really belonged. Gatekeeping me.

I stopped. "I'm not sure if you are intentionally trying to make this more difficult than this needs to be, but I am starting to feel like you are, and I think it's leading us away from the bug we need to fix. I am happy to continue if we can keep it focused to the task at hand, but if this is meant to be some kind of lesson, I choose to not participate at that level."

He admitted he was challenging me. And he backed off.

"I choose to not participate at that level." That's the boundary. Not defensive, not aggressive. Just a clear line: I'm not playing this game. We can collaborate or we can compete for status, but I'm only interested in one of those.

Gatekeeping shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. In tech. In music scenes. In geek culture. In any community where people feel like they need to prove they belong.

The impulse makes sense. When something matters to you, you want to protect it. You want to make sure the people entering your space really care, really understand, really deserve to be there. But what you're actually doing is creating isolation instead of community. You're gatekeeping the things you love, which keeps you from sharing them with people who might love them too.

The irony is brutal: the more you gatekeep, the lonelier you become.

I've learned to recognize the pattern now. In myself and in others. Gatekeeping almost always comes from perceived scarcity. When resources feel limited — attention, recognition, identity, belonging — we start testing people to determine who deserves access. As if there's only so much to go around.

But in most cases, the scarcity is imaginary. My Brother liking the same bands I liked didn't make me less of a fan. Someone else's enjoyment doesn't diminish mine.

The abundance mindset is harder to maintain than it sounds. It requires believing that there's enough for everyone. That someone else's success doesn't require your failure. That sharing what you love makes it more valuable, not less.

In leadership, this shows up as the difference between "prove you belong here" and "welcome, let's build together." Between constantly testing people and creating environments where they can grow. Between protecting territory and expanding community.

I've spent years trying to build the latter. Environments where talented people can do their best work without having to constantly prove they deserve to be there. Where the barrier to entry is "are you willing to learn and contribute?" not "can you pass this arbitrary test?"

But I still catch myself slipping into the old pattern. Still feel the impulse to protect what's mine. Still have to consciously choose abundance over scarcity.

And then there's the gatekeeping I do to myself.

I've struggled with this most of my life. Shooting down my own ideas before I've even finished thinking them through. Testing them against some imaginary standard. "That's not good enough." "Someone's already done that better." "Who are you to think you have something worth saying about this?"

In conversations, I'll have a thought that builds on what someone just said, but before I can speak, the internal gatekeeper steps in: "Is this insightful enough? Will it sound stupid? Maybe just stay quiet."

With writing, with projects, with anything that matters — the more I care about something, the higher I set the gate for myself.

But lately I've been trying to walk around my own gates the same way I walked around that girl's refusal to lend me The Cure tape.

I started noticing something: no matter how strict I thought my internal gates were, they bore no relationship to the external barriers I actually encountered. Ideas I thought were carefully considered and articulated hit gates with ten thousand deadbolts. Throwaway thoughts I barely vetted flew through open doors and were received as valid and worth pursuing.

The only pattern was me, wasting energy to make things more difficult.

My internal gates are mostly figments of my imagination. They've only ever given me exactly what I expected: reasons not to try.

The universe may present every possible obstacle along my path. Why should I add to that?

I'm working on it. Trying to extend the same abundance mindset inward. Trying to remember that my ideas don't need to pass some arbitrary test before they're allowed to exist. That sharing something imperfect is better than hoarding something perfect that never sees the light of day.

Trying to be as welcoming to my own thoughts as I try to be to others.

The work is recognizing when I'm gatekeeping and choosing differently. Welcoming instead of testing. Sharing instead of hoarding. Building community instead of protecting territory.

And that includes the community of one — the space I create for my own ideas, my own voice, my own contributions.

My roller skating community is the exact opposite of gatekeeping. I'd even call it "waygiving" — active encouragement to try new things and extend yourself. No one asks you to prove you belong. They just hand you skates and say "try this." It makes me want to create more of this everywhere.

My Brother and I still go to shows together. We share music constantly. Some of my favorite discoveries came from him. Some of his came from me. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we're experiencing it together, without the test, without the proof, without the gates.

That's what I lost all those years. And that's what I'm trying to build now — in my relationships, in my work, in the spaces I create, in myself.

You're not my gatekeeper. And I'm not yours. We're just people who love the same things, trying to share them with each other.