On belonging
Craving belonging in an attached way is the fastest way to feeling lonely and losing oneself. The most transparent path into a black hole of dispersion and self-inquiries.
If we’re being pragmatic, a sense of belonging is a protective factor leveraging stress levels, anxiety and depression. And so, even though we should resemble a fulfilling inclusiveness, it’s in connectivity and not personality masking that the question lays.
If you leverage the deductive argument coming from Lost Connections, by Johann Hari (AKA a book I’d recommend every single person in the world) you take connectiveness, and not belonging, as the answer to most modern issues. The lonely generation issue.
Simply by consulting my pocket dictionary on the word belonging, cortisol levels increase, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, and blood pressure rises. Some call it stress. I think bodily reactions are associated with man-made collection of individual characters put together to make sounds, so you can instead breathe them into existence.
It’s scary to feel you don’t belong. Been there, done that. It’s even scarier to pretend to be someone you’re not in an attempt to have people love you. Coming from a place of insecurity, you’d be stuck in middle grounds, and fail to reach your full potential. Taking a more spiritual approach, energy doesn’t lie. It doesn’t matter how many patterns you combine for the one who is color blind.
If you aim to connect with others, you’ll align on foundational levels, individual principles (and not values), and grow together from there because you’ll be aware of differences and receptive of enhancements.
That’s not how we end. That’s where we start.