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Pretentiousness repels but authenticity attracts, and vulnerability is the pathway to intimacy.
Rick Warren • The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?
When people feel like they belong, they are able to do their best and be their best. When we work toward belonging, we’re working toward creating a space where collaboration and cooperation can flourish. This is true for every kind of group, big and small. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, business manager, community organizer, or leader of any... See more
Stanford Engineering Staff • Design to make a difference: How do we foster a culture of belonging?
Belonging feels like you are seen and heard. You feel alive. You’ve been invited into any given group, and you know you can be honest with the people in it.
Stanford Engineering Staff • Design to make a difference: How do we foster a culture of belonging?
It’s a feeling of home, of “I can exhale here and be fully myself with no judgment or insecurity.” Belonging is about shared values and responsibility, and the desire to participate in making your community better. It’s about taking pride, showing up, and offering your unique gifts to others. You can’t belong if you only take.
Radha Agrawal • Belong: Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life
At the heart of exile, we must finally encounter the longing we have hidden in our own hearts. Longing is an impulse, born out of what is missing from us which we ache to return to, even if we’ve never known it directly. It aches too, for our homecoming.
Toko-pa Turner • Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home
If being ignored hollows us out, then being truly seen (not liked, not followed, not “engaged with”) but seen, can feel almost unbearable. Because while we claim to crave attention, many of us are silently terrified of what it might uncover. What if someone looks too closely and sees the neediness we have camouflaged as chill? The resentment we... See more
we live with a quiet, often unspoken tension- the aching desire to be truly seen, understood and accepted , yet simultaneously, the impulse to hide, to hold back, to keep parts of ourselves locked away from others’ eyes.
the paradox of craving to be seen but fearing being known
Vulnerability at its heart is the willingness to show up and be seen when you can’t control perception.[…]The one thing that we all have in common is… the paradox of vulnerability: that when I meet you, the very first thing I look for in you is vulnerability, and the very last thing I want to show you is my vulnerability.
Maria Popova • Aloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work – The Marginalian
People are afraid to be alone because they don’t belong to themselves. True belonging is not just about being a part of something but also having the courage to stand alone when you’re called to stand alone: when the joke’s not funny; when you don’t believe in something; when you have a different opinion; when you’re at family dinner and people are... See more