Belonging

 “Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” Brene Brown

Recently, Laurel and I joined a book club from the yoga studio that we are members at.  We are doing a year’s journey on racism.  We meet once a week, Mondays at 5 for one hour, and I look forward to those meetings each week.  Being an introvert, I don’t say much, but I just love to listen to the great insight so many people share.  Some of the comments are beautiful, some painful, but all filled with wonderful emotion.

I shared this with Hailey the other day in one of our counseling sessions, and I told her that I feel like I fit in there.  She shared with me the quote above, and she mildly corrected me on the concept of fitting in versus belonging.  And as usual, Hailey was right, I feel like I belong there.  I can just be me and not worry about being me, I’ll be accepted for who I am.

It made me think about where else I belong, and I came to yoga.  Since I’ve been going to yoga for three years with Laurel, I’ve changed, I’ve grown, I believe I’ve become a better person.  I’ve encountered so many wonderful teachers, who have so many great lessons for me.  As I’ve shared before, I get a “Jim Valvano day” out of every yoga class.  I laugh, I think, I cry.  I used to worry about how awful I was at yoga, my body is incredibly tight, I have lousy balance, there are many poses I just can’t do.  But over time, I realized, I don’t ever notice anyone else, and I doubt anyone ever notices me.  And I also think I’ve grown in my practice, I’ve given up that Type A desire to always do things perfectly, I’m satisfied with doing the best I can do on that given day.

To me, it’s much more than that though.  Yoga is so much more about the spirituality, the breathing, the mental state, and that has been as much of the practice to me or more than the physical part.  I’ve gotten so much more out of those aspects.  And the people, for the most part, are so nice, so friendly, so accepting.  Again, being an introvert, I don’t talk much to people, but I live vicariously through Laurel, the extrovert in our marriage, who has never met a stranger.  I like to listen and hear about people through their conversations with Laurel.

“Well it’s a sad man my friend who is living in his own skin, but can’t stand the company”

I still haven’t been able to bring myself to say “Namaste” at the end of practice, because I still don’t believe I’m worthy to be there, I still can’t overcome my dislike for myself, but I do feel I belong.  Now, some may find this as a contradiction, but I don’t see it that way.  While I live by the line above from the Bruce Springsteen song, “Better Days”, my feeling of belonging comes from the acceptance that others seem to have for me.  I always feel welcome at yoga.

As I related to Hailey, the realization where you do belong then leads me at least to the question of where I don’t belong.  That was a painful exercise to go through. 

I started with church.  I’ve come to realize that I just don’t feel like I belong at church.  Don’t get me wrong, I love church, I love the sermons (I’m a sermon geek), I love the music, I love the children, the older adults, I love the passion the pastors bring.  I just think we are missing something, and I think too often, we are missing Jesus Christ, or more, what Jesus taught, and lived and died for.

I’ve been recently reading a few books, one is “Leaving Church” by Reverend Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor.  In it she relates her struggle with the church, and leaving the clergy to become a college professor.  The other is “See No Stranger – A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love” by Valerie Kaur.  I really don’t know how to adequately describe this book to give it justice, it’s so phenomenal, but the best I can say is it is the memoirs of a young Sikh woman and her story of dealing with the hatred we have in this country of those who are different from us.  It made me reflect back on one of my favorite books, Nadia Bolz Weber’s “Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People”.  I just feel as if we have lost sight of what Jesus’ intent was and the people that he cared for.  He lived and embraced those who are the least among us.

Where does that leave me?  I’m not sure.  I still am a devout follower of Jesus Christ.  That won’t change.  I still believe in a lot of what we do as a church.  I just can’t embrace the entire package, and because of that, I feel like I don’t belong.  I think it’s time for me to take a sabbatical and figure out what that means for me, I’ve been attending church for probably close to my 60 years, so this is a very painful realization.

And then I came to work.  Early in my career, after I first became a manager at Touche Ross, before we merged and became Deloitte, we had a management training session where I had my first exposure to the Myers Briggs Personality Test.  As we sat there with the session leader, he put on the board everyone’s personality type spread out over a long line.  There was a huge cluster of X’s on one side of the continuum, and then way over on the other side, there was one lonely X.  Some in the group started chuckling, and then finally someone said, “McCullough”.  Yes, McCullough.

I shared that story recently with Hailey, and I told her that I’ve come to the realization, that I’ve never fit in anywhere where I’ve worked.  Well, I could probably put a small caveat to that, I fit in at Goodwill Industries of Dayton, but I was there just a short period of time.  But the remainder of my 38 years or so of working, I just don’t fit in.  I’m good at what I do, I’ve been successful, but I just don’t enjoy it, I picked the wrong profession (I know, I know, every child grows up dreaming of being an accountant, what’s wrong with me?).

I told Hailey, I’ve always been a salmon swimming upstream, and to be honest, it’s getting exhausting. As we talked through it, we talked further on the topic of fitting in versus belonging.  I started thinking about some of my colleagues and how they have figured out how to fit in, and how they have been much happier than me.  I realized the only one who is unhappy about my inability to fit in is me.  I keep swimming against the current, and I keep getting beaten back.  I don’t belong, but I’m too stubborn to fit in. 

Then Hailey, as usual, asked the critical question, “I think I know the answer to this, but would you have it any other way?”  I thought about it for a second, and answered, “No.  I’m not a fitter inner (I know, great grammar).  I just won’t do it.”  But, yet again, what does that mean for me?

"True seeing touches the heart and authentic being expresses it"

Well, it’s a journey, and I may be 60, but I don’t think the journey is quite over for me yet (hopefully).  I think, my time in yoga these last three years has awakened me.  I think this last year with Hailey has awakened me.  I think this last year of reading Rolf Gates' book "Meditations on Intention and Being" has been amazing for me.  And I think these few months in our book club has awakened me.  A sense of belonging is important to me, and I just can’t be someone who I’m not.  While some of these are painful realizations, they’re important ones that have to happen. 

I’ll close with something fun and uplifting because that’s what this blog post is really about, even if it doesn’t seem that way.  While I never like to call out any specific yoga teacher, because most of them are so incredible, I’ll share the following quote that Valerie shared with us on Saturday (the picture to the right is also a quote she shared earlier this year).  Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite philosophers, and this one really seemed to fit me at the moment:

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."