Longing for Belonging
The holiday season has been officially kicked off and it can come with many feelings both of joy and anxiety. One that permeates our individual lives, and the world we are experiencing is the nature of Belonging. I could write an entire book on my own journey with this feeling and all the ways I attempted to belong to every family but my own, or every situation I entered, or every new relationship I attempted. Of course its origins are found in insecurity and that nagging doubt that we are ever enough or that people really do like me or why don’t they. In all my years of struggle and study about this feeling, I never asked myself Belong to what?
As we participate in the great upheaval of our times and seek to bring in as Dr. King called it, “The beloved community”…we are going to have to transform this area of our life and the lives of others. I can tell you for sure its not a topic that you can learn about and achieve (bad news for some) ..its not something that will be settled by finding the right place to work, live, or the right partner to select. It won’t resolve by finding your true calling – it masquerades inside of these things but never delivers on the promise of seeking- but the seeking actually produces no finding.
One of my very best friends in life told me many years ago that she walks into a room with the feeling that everybody in that room loves her. At the time, her comment was both annoying and intimidating and of course it stuck with me. How could that be – isn’t love or esteem something to earn – or qualify for – or somehow prove you are somehow worth the effort. I did all that and never felt any better.
Resting in belonging is a little like a magic trick…you have to get ahead of the feeling to dissolve the feeling. To put it simply its an already state not a to be pursued state. In other words, we already belong – it is inveterate to our very existence. We belong to Life with the big “L” and it follows then that we belong to everyone and everyone belongs to us. This is a beautiful feeling for a minute, and then we start thinking of people we don’t like or people we don’t agree with, or people who have hurt us or unjust systems that have victimized so many. But belonging isn’t approving – it isn’t agreeing and it isn’t even in forgiving (although that often follows). Belonging is realized.
Nelson Mandela is someone I have held in high regard my entire adult life. When I arrived in Berkeley for graduate school, he was imprisoned on Robbin Island. I protested and petitioned but I never thought he would be released, never mind President of South Africa and the voice for reconciliation. His realization that the persecutors and the victims of Apartheid were flip signs of the same coin; and that only by belonging to each other and that history could they find their way out; led to a transformation that the world witnessed as miraculous change. He got the before the fact of action to find that both sides of the conflict were trapped inside a belief of not belonging.
My decade in working with under- resourced people continued to teach me the same lesson. I didn’t have to “do good” to be worthy – I just needed to realize I was already in kinship with everyone and that realization changed every idea and action that followed. One day I realized that nagging sense of where do I belong was gone. The Life imperative had shifted that place in me and as always with an AHA, you see the entire world as new.
I know this blog won’t “fix” that issue if any of you relate – but my hope is you will catch that you already are the thing you are searching for and if we can bring that energy to the upheaval we will surely usher in the Renaissance – in fact nothing will stop it from happening.
Take a breath – and know you Belong.
