Outcasts. Do We Still Belong?

Outcasts

10:03

Yesterday, in yoga class, I became curious about something.

Why don't yoga teachers OM anymore?

That's it. A question.

I asked the teacher and immediately felt something change. There was a personal belief there. Something had been touched. I could feel that pushing further wasn't going to create understanding, so I didn't.

But I left curious.

Not about the OM.

About me.

Because I know this place.

I've been finding myself here most of my life.

I ask the question. I notice the inconsistency. I feel what isn't being said. Sometimes I walk straight into another person's tender place without even realizing there was a door there.

And suddenly I'm standing outside again.

The Black Sheep

Our society is richly embedded with groups built around shared beliefs.

Families. Businesses. Healing communities. Yoga communities certainly have them.

We gather around what we collectively agree is true, appropriate, spiritual, professional, loving, loyal, normal.

Those agreements help create belonging.

But what happens when you don't completely agree?

What happens when you notice something the group doesn't want noticed?

Are you wrong when there seems to be no place to Be?

I've been thinking about the black sheep. The outsider. The one who sees the shadow first.

And because this is my story, I have to ask the harder question:

Is there a lesson here for me?

Otherwise, this becomes a very convenient story about all the people who excluded, betrayed, dismissed, misunderstood, manipulated, or simply didn't choose me.

I could write that story.

I have receipts.

But I don't think that's the story.

What If Seeing Isn't the Same as Knowing?

There have been times when I sensed something long before it became visible.

There have also been times when I believed I understood what was happening inside another person when I couldn't possibly know the whole of it.

Seeing something doesn't mean I see everything.

Feeling something doesn't make my interpretation infallible.

And curiosity isn't curiosity anymore if I've already decided what the answer is.

This, I think, is the crossroads.

The moment I abandon curiosity for certainty, I risk abandoning myself.

Curiosity allows me to trust what I sense while leaving room for what I don't know.

I ask questions. I feel into inconsistencies. I notice when someone's words and their energy don't seem to be saying the same thing.

Sometimes that opens extraordinary conversations.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Not everyone wants the light turned on.

And perhaps more importantly, it isn't always my room.

The Cost of Belonging

Belonging is easy when everybody agrees.

The more interesting question is what happens when they don't.

What part of yourself are you willing to silence to remain inside the family, friendship, business, community, profession, spiritual group, or relationship?

I have experienced enough separation to know its particular ache.

There have been relationships I thought were friendships that ended without the conversation I believed friendship deserved.

There have been places where I invested years of myself, my ideas, creativity, work and belief into building something with another person, only to later watch the vision and creative pieces move forward without me.

And some losses aren't simply about being left out.

Sometimes your vision and creative work, something that came through you, is taken

without your consent.

What becomes compromised isn't only the original creation.

It's what was done with it.

There is a residue to that. A kind of dirt that doesn't belong to the creation itself, but to the way it was taken.

And that presents a very different question:

When someone else's choices ask them to compromise their integrity, will I compromise mine in order to remain connected to them?

Will I abandon what I see because someone else has chosen not to look?

Will I remain silent because speaking makes other people uncomfortable?

Will I surrender what I know simply to avoid being called difficult, angry, bitter, or unable to let go?

No.

Their choices don't require my self-abandonment.

The Opposite of Belonging

Last month I wrote, I belong to myself first.

I understood exactly what I meant.

I know what belonging to myself can cost.

Everything.

And I have paid that price more than once.

Which is precisely why I am no longer willing to pay for belonging with myself.

Because belonging to yourself becomes a choice at the exact moment staying somewhere asks you to leave some essential part of yourself behind.

For much of my life, I thought the opposite of belonging was exclusion.

I was wrong.

The opposite of belonging is self-abandonment.

Being excluded hurts.

Being misunderstood hurts.

Being betrayed hurts.

But none of those experiences requires me to leave myself too.

Perhaps that is the work of the outcast.

Not proving you're right.

Not making everyone who couldn't meet you wrong.

Not turning isolation into an identity.

But learning to see without needing everyone else to see.

To question without requiring an answer.

To recognize another person's shadow without making it yours to expose.

To know when curiosity opens a door and when to leave the door closed.

And to recognize when belonging begins requiring self-abandonment.

Do We Still Belong?

Maybe being an outcast isn't always about being cast out.

Sometimes we outgrow the agreements that once gave us membership.

Sometimes we stop pretending not to see.

Sometimes someone else closes the door.

And sometimes we choose to walk through it.

The question is whether we leave ourselves behind when we go.

I don't do that anymore.

I can be wrong and still belong to myself.

I can see something and not see everything.

I can trust what I sense and remain curious about what I don't know.

I can lose my place in someone's life, business, family, community, or story without losing my place in my own.

I belong to myself first.

Maybe that's not the consolation prize for being an outcast.

Maybe that's where belonging begins.