When I was younger, I hated going to parties. I never felt comfortable: I didn’t do small talk well, and I felt awkward just standing there. My most common feeling was that I didn’t belong.
Ask any teenage girl if you want to know how painful it is not to belong. Book clubs, FB groups, sports teams, families, spiritual communities, TikTok followers, bridge groups, dinner clubs: we humans try hard to belong. It’s a painful ego blow to find yourself on the outside.
Belonging is a basic human need. It’s a basic need of the more-than-human world too. Consider the marigolds and tomatoes in our gardens, companioning each other to health. Consider herring, which form whirling balls to increase their safety in ocean waters; or cedar trees who share nutrients with each other while living, and feed themselves to each other as they die; or even the turkeys in my neighborhood that waddle around like a flock of thugs to scare off the coyotes and occasional bear.
When I was young and going to parties, I thought that belonging was a matter of finding other people just like myself. Indeed, this is a common thread I hear from people walking a spiritual path: I need companions. And it’s true that finding people who see the world from the same perspective is essential. But while we’re looking for connection and companions, we may get stuck on what separates us. Can’t get close to that one, we don’t believe the same things. Can’t be friends with that one, I don’t like his politics. Don’t want to connect with that one, she seems snooty.
When I was a young woman going to parties, standing around waiting for someone to be interested enough in me to talk to me, I was waiting to be noticed. Waiting to be accepted. The key word here is waiting. I thought belonging was something that could be bestowed upon me. It was a matter of being invited into a select group.
But to really belong? That isn’t about collecting folks just like me so I’m comfortable. Nor is it a matter of shutting out the ones that aren’t like me. True belonging flips our mental frames: we quit looking for how others are like us, and we discover how we are like others. True belonging is not a closed group, but an opening outward.
When I was young and going to parties, a wise older friend suggested that when I felt lonely and awkward, I should look for someone else who seemed lonely. I should go start a conversation. I should be interested in them, and who they were, and what they loved about life. Invariably, I found my heart opening, found a point of contact, found connection.
When we untangle ourselves from our sticky ego and its fears, when we focus on another’s comfort and wellbeing, then our own comfort and wellbeing miraculously increase. We’re granted a more spacious, God’s-eye-view of life. Making sure that others feel included has the paradoxical effect of making me feel like I belong everywhere.