“Until we get lost, we don’t begin to find ourselves.” ~Henry David Thoreau
For most of my life, I felt like I was outside the circle.
Not always, but every time I’ve stepped back and looked at my entire life, the thread has been that I’m on the outside looking in.
I think this feeling was driven for a long time. I wanted to prove something, earn my place with effort and excellence. I wanted to be the kind of person people were happy to be.
I sharpened myself in sports, trying to play great games to get the crowd’s appreciation. I dreamed of playing my bass with such energy that the listeners could feel it flowing through them. I put together my resume and did my best to be a great teacher, someone who changes lives.
These desires came from deep within me. The love of the game, the appeal of music and the joy of good teaching were all true expressions of my heart. But the desire for connection is woven into everything, underneath it all.
All of these aspirations have come true in one form or another and I have given myself completely to them. However, what I found in them was not what I expected. I couldn’t get the togetherness I was striving for from the outside.
I was in my early twenties when I came to Philadelphia for graduate school, and I still carried all of this with me without knowing it. A friend of mine took me to a party on a cold night, a gathering of close friends in someone’s backyard, and we all stood around a pool.
The group chatted and enjoyed the evening. I tried to move from one small talk to another, looking for a way in. Nothing worked.
An hour later I was standing at the edge of the pool and something moved me.
Without thinking, I stepped off the edge into the depths. Fully dressed. The cold water closed above me and I stayed underneath for a few long seconds.
My friend was confused. I was numb. We drove home in silence, I soaked the passenger seat.
I couldn’t explain what I had done, not that night and not for a long time. The memory stayed with me for thirty years, resurfacing from time to time, painfully and strangely. And beneath its strangeness was something else, a layer of confusion that I hadn’t yet dared to look directly at.
The confusion was deeper than the act itself. Underneath was something I had hidden even from myself, which was how much I wanted to belong that night, and how much that desire was exposed.
For years I was ashamed of that night, as if it were a weakness or a flaw in my character to be seen and appreciated. It took me decades to understand that the need itself was never the problem.
I recently read something that got me thinking. For almost all of human history, people lived in small groups of twenty, thirty, fifty people, and your place in that group was everything. It determined whether you and your children ate, protected, survived.
I’ve also read that the brain processes the pain of exclusion the same way it processes physical injury. So while my cold snap was strange and unexpected, even for me, it was also a response to something ancient and true.
Researchers who study this have put the need in the same category as hunger and thirst. All people need it, whether we realize it or not.
I didn’t know all this when I entered that pool in Philadelphia. And after much painful reflection, I now realize that I was not needy in a shameful way. I was simply a young man, painfully alone in the crowd.
I think in that moment I chose the rejection I could control over the rejection I couldn’t. The cold water was honest. He didn’t act like it was my place, and if I was going to avoid it, I decided to totally be.
I found that the humiliation I experienced at the party, and then through years of reflection, was part of becoming the person I always wanted to be.
Because I know what it’s like to feel invisible and the shame of that feeling, I recognize this struggle in others and can help. I lived too close to the pain of isolation to mistake it for something else or to look away when someone else was suffering.
Thirty years was enough time for the patterns of my life to come into focus. And now I see that the feeling I spent so long trying to escape gave me insight into something I couldn’t otherwise understand: that we all need belonging in one way or another.
When I walk into a room today, whether it’s a party, a family gathering, or the workplace, my attention turns to the person standing alone.
Someone who laughs a little too enthusiastically at something that wasn’t that funny. It’s attached to their phone because it’s easier than sitting there aimlessly. The one who came hoping that tonight would be different, and the one who is beginning to wonder if it will be.
I know that man. I was that person, and in some ways I still am.
The feeling of not belonging doesn’t go away just because you become aware of it and work on it, at least not for me. It eases from time to time, but it never goes away completely. And I was no longer waiting for the day.
Instead, I found that pain becomes something you can endure without breaking you. It becomes a part of who you are, something you learn to accept, relate to, and even draw strength from because it keeps you honest about what it means to be human.
This is how my life has become. I want people to know and feel it in their bones when they leave the room: They see you. You listened. You are valuable. And you are loved.
I had to be honest with myself about the limits of those words. When I hid the parts of myself I was afraid to show, no amount of outside comfort could fully reach me. And sometimes the people around me didn’t look hard enough to find the good in me.
I had to see that the belonging I longed for wasn’t always blocked by my own walls. Sometimes it just wasn’t offered. Let’s face it, the world can be a cold and cruel place sometimes.
I’ve learned that we tend to give to others what we need most ourselves, and this is certainly true for me. The pain I experienced didn’t just hurt me. He showed me what I was up to.
Not everyone will see you for who you really are. Some people will be tuned to a different frequency and that will hurt. But the more honestly you present yourself to the world, the more chances you give the right people to get to know you.
This belief has been tested and proven in my own life. In my twenties, I thought it would be funny to bring a homemade Key Lime pie to a New Year’s Eve party full of people trying to look cool. It was a bit like bringing baked goods to a nightclub and a perfect example of my wacky sense of humor.
A young woman laughed out loud when I offered the pie and joined the kitchen table for a slice. We talked and enjoyed each other’s company until the party faded into the background.
That young woman became my wife.
We’ve been together for over twenty-five years, and since then she’s told me she’s never liked Key Lime pie. The truth was, she just wanted to know the guy who was brave enough to be himself in a room full of people pretending to be someone else.
The qualities that make you the most yourself are visible to those who know how to look. You have your place here and now in this world, as you are, more than once, if you deserve it. And when you show others what’s true about you, you give the right people a chance to find you.
I did not choose the calling to see people, to help them open up and really hold them together. I found it by following my own wound, my own need for the same thing, all the way to the other side. It’s been a steady journey with some hard falls along the way, but it’s the most valuable thing I’ve ever stumbled upon.
The young man I was when I entered that pool in Philadelphia was not broken. In my own painful and wordless way, I was searching for some truth. And even though I still struggle with belonging at times, I have found it.
I learned to belong to myself. I have learned to see the pain that people carry but rarely name and recognize it without judgment because I know it from the inside. This sight changed me from someone looking for a place to belong to someone trying to create that place for others.
The outside is a difficult place to learn. But it teaches you to see.
About Daniel H. Shapiro
Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is the keynote speaker, author and mentor. He is passionate about human relationships and the stories we carry with us. To learn more about his book, 5 Practices of a Caring Mentoror about your mentoring and speaking services, check it out yourinherentgoodness.com.
