I recently attended
a workshop with what I had hoped would be my tribe, women working the same program
for food addiction. Throughout the day, though, I felt separate and very
critical of the participants. By the time I left, I was bereft: if I
don’t belong here, where do I belong?
I’ve left
myself vulnerable to feeling excluded because I’ve thought belonging depended
on someone else’s welcome, invitation, and desire to know me. I’ve come home
from many a gathering where no one asked me a question, convinced I didn’t fit
in, when I could have more generously interpreted their silence as shyness or a
different set of rules for social interactions.
I see now that I typically
enter a social setting looking for evidence that I don’t belong, and of course
whatever we seek we find. Even overt assurances that I am welcome are fleeting when
I’m determined to find the ways that I’m better or worse. Mostly I’ve used quite
superficial standards of appearance and weight to determine my ranking. I’ve bought
the social lie that thin equals happy, so that particular gathering of women,
who were mostly heavier yet clearly happier, jarred loose that old idea. To feel
like I belong, I need to look for similarities, and when I’m aware of differences,
to become curious rather than judgmental.
Instead of waiting
to feel happy once I’ve achieved a certain goal (book publication, number on
the scale, number of readers, etc.) I need to first belong to and with myself. This
is tricky because my self-critical pathways are so strong, that I’m mostly in a
state of feeling like a project in need of perfecting, which bleeds into every
encounter I have. (For instance, I’m currently “working” on stopping caffeine
and recreational shopping.) When I don’t belong anywhere, I know it’s time to
up my meditation, which, for me, is the primary practice that soothes that
critical faculty. When we meditate, barriers and boundaries the ego has created
for protection diminish, soften, and go into the background as my inner being comes
into the foreground.
Perhaps
that’s why sitting down to meditate feels like coming home. The 12 Steps and 12 Traditions says,
“Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of
belonging that comes to us” (105). Sitting with the intention of being in
conscious contact with a power greater than myself, with my inner being, and in
connection with all souls striving to be loving and kind may not alone change a
world that demonstrates indifference and cruelty each day. But my desire to be connected to a larger goodness
that is also within me is the soil from which helpful public actions grow.
When I even
glimpse that I belong in the most cosmic sense of the word, I breathe easier, become
clear-minded, and grow more tolerant. No longer am I awaiting a welcome from
someone who may be struggling today. What would happen if I made a decision to
belong, starting today with this human body, just as it is?
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