As the only boy in my family, I can confidently say that there were times when I felt like I didn’t belong. There were plenty of times when I wasn’t part of the inside jokes or when family information reached me last.
In many cases, I felt like the odd one out. The sadness this notion brought felt like exile. I spent a lot of time by myself, whether it be in my room, if I had one, or in the garage.
Maybe I used this dynamic to find value elsewhere. I found it in making sure I had friends, as I was dependent on them for a social life.
Even so, it still hurt to be on the outside looking in. No one wants to feel rejection. Yet, this rejection is not the truth.
We don’t hurt because we are rejected. We hurt because we agree with the pain of exclusion, which confirms that you are a separate entity. By agreeing with this notion, it’s very easy to self-isolate.
The world continuously has us search for a sense of belonging that was never truly real in the first place.
The Collection of Bodies
Any group is just a collection of bodies. There’s no mystique to it, even though we put a lot of emphasis on togetherness.
If we truly think about community, we see it defined by who they are. This could be a social circle, a political faction, or a corporate culture. These same communities are also defined by who they leave out. The group functions as one, separate from its opposite.
To belong to these groups, you must adopt a specific set of masks, defend a specific set of opinions, and identify the out-group.
I joined a group on the Meetup app that was very much in my wheelhouse. After some time speaking online, I decided to attend one of their scheduled meetups. As we conversed, it felt like we could only talk about how people outside this interest were basically indecent. Throughout the event, I just heard jabs directed at its opposite. Safe to say, I didn’t stay long in the group.
Being a part of the in-group simply means you’ve successfully limited yourself. In this scenario, the feeling of being rejected isn’t pain, but our souls celebrating that we haven’t been reduced to a category.
The fear of rejection can be reframed as divine intervention. When a group won’t welcome you, the group loses its luster. You remove the attachment to the need to belong, knowing that this belonging is nothing more than a dream.
With no outward attachments, you are free to turn inward, inward into self-love that needs no external validation.
Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere
Society tells you to defend your place, prove your worth, and fight for inclusion. When it comes to exclusion, the instinct is to then build a wall.
This wall makes it easier to judge those who’ve judged you. It also buys you time to “improve” so you can try again. This wall of defense only proves you are not safe and are under attack. We use this wall to find safety.
True safety lies in dropping the barriers by removing the defense of your “right” to belong. You never needed the right to exist. You simply are. By dropping the wall, you prove that rejection has no power over you.
The entire concept of the world is built on boundaries. I’m over here, and you are over there. We are separated by location, and the screen on which we both read these words.
Yet doesn’t both our reading and our affirming of these words connect us? If I have an interest, but I’m not part of the group, amn’t I still connected through the interest?
The closed door between the group and me is a theatrical prop. You can’t be a stranger to your own reality. In our thoughts, we can only feel like strangers in our own home.
The world sees belonging only in a yes to a job offer or an invitation to a party. However, true perception is only in your state of mind.
Profound peace arises when you stop auditioning for a role in someone else’s dream. Once we love ourselves, we stop asking the world to tell us who we are.
You remain perfect even if there are a million no’s from a million bodies. Your worth is not an aggregate of likes and follows.
Knowing this creates a profound sense of joy once we perceive that the need to belong is the need to be small.
The End of Self-Improvement
With the need to belong comes the need for self-improvement. We are inundated with self-help books that teach us how to be more charismatic, read social cues, or “find your tribe.”
We fail to realize that trying to make ourselves more likable validates the belief that we are currently unlikable.
The removal of this belief is simply the removal of action. You don’t need to change your personality, your hair, or your conversational style. Trying to change yourself for a group is like rearranging chairs on the Titanic.
The person who needs to improve is not who you are.
This shift in perspective alters the outlook of those in the groups you’d like to join. The need for belonging sees members as powerful judges, cool gatekeepers, or cruel conspirators. A shift in perspective sees them all as frightened children.
Those who exclude you from the group aren’t doing it out of strength, but out of terror. They believe their safety lies in the walls of their group, their shared opinions, and their mutual specialness. They keep their walls up, afraid that letting someone different in will cost them their status.
When we are rejected, it’s not that they are judging us. They are defending their dream.
If we see belonging in this way, not only do we not want to join, but we also find a sense of compassion in attempts to let them know they are more than what they defend.
The feeling of being a misfit is actually a high compliment. The reason you don’t fit in is that you are too vast for their container.
Questions and Responses
The ache is very real to the ego, which thrives on the idea that you are a small, separate fragment in need of “joining.” But you aren’t hurting because you are excluded; you are hurting because you believe your value is a variable that others can vote on. The “ache” is actually your Spirit protesting the tiny, cramped identity the world is trying to force upon you. You don’t fit in because you are too vast for the container.
There is a world of difference between being isolated and being at peace. Isolation is a wall built in anger. Peace is what happens when you realize there is no “outside” to kick. When you stop auditioning for the world, you finally become available for True Connection. You begin to see “others” not as judges to impress, but as brothers to love.
Self-improvement is often just a polite way of telling yourself that God’s creation wasn’t good enough. If you are trying to be “more likable” to fit into a group, you are essentially polishing a mask. You don’t need a better personality; you need to realize you are the Light behind it. When you accept your own innocence, you’ll find that you move through the world with a natural grace that no self-help book could ever teach.
Look past their behavior to their fear. A group that defines itself by who it leaves out is a group of frightened children huddling in a sandcastle. They aren’t strong; they are terrified that if they let “the other” in, their fragile sense of specialness will vanish. When you see their exclusion as a defense against their own nightmare, you stop feeling like a victim and begin to feel a quiet compassion for their struggle.
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