Finding Your Tribe

The people who love you should not require you to shrink. And yet so many of us learned belonging as a kind of quiet negotiation, where we traded pieces of ourselves for the promise of not being alone.

The false trade

I used to think of belonging as a set of concessions. Laugh at the joke you don't find funny. Nod at the opinion you don't hold. Round the edges of the thing that makes you specific, so you can fit through the shared door.

This kind of belonging is a room-temperature loneliness. You are technically not alone, and yet the you that is present is not really you.

Belong

The third movement of the DRB Method is Belong — but a very particular kind of belonging. Not the belonging of fitting in, which asks you to erase difference, but the belonging of being met, which asks you to bring it.

Deep connection without disappearance

Deep connection begins after Discover and Reconnect for a reason. You cannot bring a self you have not yet met. You cannot be known by someone if the you they are meeting is a costume.

Once you have practiced hearing your own voice, you become able to speak it plainly. And when you speak plainly, a strange thing happens: some people move away, and the ones who move closer are actually yours.

Signs of a tribe

Your tribe will not agree with you about everything. That is not the point. The point is that in their company, you feel less need to translate. Your sentences come out whole. Your silences do not require explanation.

Belonging that requires disappearance is not belonging. It is a lonely with a better address.