You Belong: A Call for Connection

anything we practice we get good at, whether what we are practicing is good for us or not: I can practice being swayed by the conditioning of society or I can practice undoing these implicit biases.

Our aspiration is rooted in acceptance. Aspiration and acceptance may seem contradictory (those damn paradoxes again): we aspire to belong, and we accept that this is already so. We discover this through the body.

In order to become liberated, to become free, to truly belong, we must know ourselves. Why? Well any suffering, dis-ease, unhappiness, anxiety, or not belonging that we experience exists within us.

we also don’t need to feel belonging to belong. Belonging is truth and it is the fundamental nature of reality right here and now, whether we feel it or not. For me, it’s often been not.

Belonging flourishes within this paradox: everything is connected, yet everything is experienced as separate.

All of us are taught to not belong. We feel we don’t belong and presto, our survival instinct triggers our longing to belong.

Most of us are trapped in cycles of not belonging, in the anxiety that we are not normal. Even the blondest, bluest-eyed, straightest kid can feel that he doesn’t belong (he likely lost belonging to his ancestral cultures—the cost of whiteness).

“Celebrate diversity” is not just an empty slogan: it points to the connection and belonging that hearing each other’s stories creates.

“Difference” does not equal “not belonging,” but as many of us live farther away from our families and as we connect to multiple communities and cultures, our sense of belonging feels tenuous.