When Belonging Feels Out of Reach

There is something curious about belonging

There is something curious about belonging.

We spend a surprising amount of our lives looking for it, yet very few of us stop to ask what we are actually looking for.

We speak about belonging as though it is a place we arrive. We imagine it might be waiting in another town, another workplace, another relationship or another community where we finally feel understood. Belonging becomes something out there, somewhere ahead of us.

Life doesn’t always cooperate with that idea.

I’ve met people who have never left the town where they were born and still felt like outsiders. I’ve also met people who have crossed oceans, changed countries and started over more than once, yet somehow carried a quiet sense of home wherever they went.

The place doesn’t seem to explain it.

Searching isn’t always about where we are

That sat quietly underneath my conversation with Endre Hoffmann.

On the surface, his story is about travel. He has lived in different countries and built a life across cultures. It would be easy to think the conversation is about movement.

It isn’t.

It’s about searching.

There is a difference because people can spend their whole lives searching without ever packing a suitcase.

During our conversation Endre shared a story from his school years. His classmates travelled overseas on a school trip. He stayed behind because his parents couldn’t afford to send him. Looking back, he could see that the event itself wasn’t what shaped the years that followed. It was the meaning he gave it.

That caught my attention because I don’t think this is unique to Endre.

Most of us carry stories about ourselves that began long before we had the maturity to question whether they were true.

We don’t only remember what happened

Memory is a curious thing.

Two people can live through exactly the same event and carry completely different stories for the rest of their lives.

One remembers disappointment.

Another remembers rejection.

One remembers feeling protected.

Another remembers feeling forgotten.

The event is the same.

The story isn’t.

I sometimes wonder how many of the things we believe about ourselves today are really conclusions reached by a much younger version of ourselves.

Not because anyone deliberately taught us those things.

Simply because we were trying to make sense of the world with the understanding we had at the time.

Perhaps belonging begins somewhere unexpected

Towards the end of our conversation I asked Endre whether belonging is something we find or something we create.

He didn’t choose between the two.

Instead, he spoke about identity and the years he spent searching before arriving at a place where, in his words, he was “able to be present.”

I like that he didn’t offer a simple answer.

Some questions deserve more than one sentence.

Brew the Change

This week’s Brew the Change is simple.

Help one person feel like they belong.

You already know what that could look like.

There is probably someone whose face has already come to mind while you’ve been reading this.

Sometimes we imagine belonging is something we have to wait for.

Sometimes it begins because one person decides to make room for another.

Watch the episode on YouTube