You Belong: A Call for Connection

Curiosity is a crucial component of lessening our reactivity.

Most of us just coast through life being swayed by deeply embedded physical and emotional triggers. How often are we paying such close attention to our physical, emotional, and mental experiences to witness these subtle connections? Probably not that often. Unless we practice.

If you live life perceiving every unknown person as a threat, or every social encounter or every academic challenge or public speaking experience or every potential romantic interaction (or whatever it is you fear) as a threat, as a threatening shadow, life’s going to be pretty hard. Knowing ourselves helps us understand our particular patterns.

Comparing becomes problematic when it is not grounded in a fundamental understanding of belonging. When comparison is rooted in separation, it becomes competitive.

All this comparison (conscious or unconscious, minor or significant) leads us into separation and domination—into competitive feelings of doubt, deficiency, and despair. This is because when we compare ourselves to others (or are being compared), we are engaged in near-constant self-judgements and critiques.

Although we are not one, we are not separate. And although we are not separate, we are not the same.

By the time we’re adolescents and adults, we’ve learned what is allowable and not allowable in our given or chosen groups and to some degree we accept and internalize those rules.

Belonging is not about bypassing crises so we feel better within our individual bubbles.

The pathology of productivity is entwined with a pathology of performativity. The need to always do (and share) keeps us from grounding, knowing, loving, connecting, and ultimately from being.