My thoughts on ‘a sense of belonging’

 A disclaimer: this is one of those raw open posts of mine…

I went to two shows in the Vancouver Fringe Festival Friday evening, one after the other. I chose based on the times but also on the short blurb written up on the website. Nothing would have indicated that I was choosing these shows based on any theme or that they were in any way related, but then again maybe when we are in a state of processing our lens on the world choses subconsciously for us. The first show, titled Mx, is about a young queer woman growing up in East Vancouver whose mother is white and father (with whom she has no relationship) is black. The performance is based on the young woman listening to the two ‘sides’ of her identity as she sees it, one represented by a black woman and one a white woman. It is an interesting journey and one with a lot of humour attached to very difficult aspects of life, but ultimately Mx realizes that she does not fit into any ‘category’ and that is who she truly is. The second show was an exploration of connections between people. The space was set up for 15 audience members, but there were only four of us and so it was a very intimate experience. The premise on which the creator based his show was that what we need to aspire to in life to generating connections with other people. We may inhabit the same physical space, sit in a busy coffee shop surrounded by people, but we are feeling more and more alone. We can blame technology, the busyness of life or a multitude of other factors but essentially it comes down to having the courage to reach out and form a connection with another human being.

Did I choose these two shows by chance or was my selection based on the main chorus of my thoughts at present? For almost a year now I have found myself constantly being drawn back into the concept of belonging, questioning what it really means as a word and fundamentally what is means in my life. My father reminds me on occasion that in my early 20s I used to say how I wish I had grown up in a house in a neighbourhood and had been surrounded by the same people my entire childhood and youth. I do not wish that anymore, for one it is trivial to focus on what we cannot change of the past, and for another I am eternally grateful for the very full and interesting childhood, youth and life I have had. There have been phases and steps, and I reflect on them now as I try to dig deeper into my ‘sense of belonging’.

Growing up in Sudan was magical in one sense, learning another language, being immersed in a completely different culture to that of my parents; but growing up in Sudan brought with it some confusion as there was always a theme of being ‘different’. Summer holidays in Ireland and Canada did little to dissipate this feeling. Teenage years spent in the Gulf region brought some illusion of being part of an expat community because everyone was from somewhere else, and that created a bond of sorts. At 16 I started boarding school in Dublin, and here I thought was my answer. I was in the land were my mother had been born, where I had spent many months in the summer, where I had family. The actuality was that I did not fit the norm of life for my boarding school dormmates. I struggled trying to fit in with what I saw as the expectations on me. I bought clothes that looked like theirs, I tried smoking because that is what they all did, I tried beer at 17 and hated it, but then everyone else was doing it, I sewed my church skirt up to the length all the other girls had, and inside I was screaming. I was bullied for being different because even though I tried to fit in through my actions, I could never change who I was and the battle I had to be true to myself. University offered some relief because there I found people who like me didn’t fit into ‘the norm’. I was drawn to these friends not because we had similar backgrounds, but because we all struggled with fitting in to whatever context we had come from.

In reflecting back on this period and the time since I realize that my battle has been an internal one. I have been blessed with having amazing people in my life, wonderful friends and a very supportive extended family. But ultimately, we are all struggling with the same basic human need, a need to feel that we are a part of something, that we are accepted. It is the age-old process of ‘keeping up with the Jones’ dilemma - “I do not want what society is telling me but if everyone else is doing it or talking about it then it should be important to me too”. I assumed that if I did what societal norms suggested I should want to do, then my sense of dislocation and not belonging would drift away. Back to the people in my life – despite my internal struggle and fear, I still managed to surround myself with incredible people in whom I saw strength and the ability to question the institutional requirements of society. I am most drawn to people who unlike me did not have the privilege of an ‘exotic’ childhood and youth, they did grow up in that wish I had in my 20s of a house in a neighbourhood surrounded by the same people their entire childhood. Nonetheless, they had questioned this and realized that there was more to life and their sense of belonging. Indeed, it is and was who my parents are and were – living lives because they sensed there was more to life than the suburbs of Vancouver or rural Ireland.

For years, I generated narratives for myself that at some point in my life I would find a place, a person, a community and that would make all the fear of dislocation and loneliness go away. Truth is that is an illusion. Even in my profession of academia where I saw an ability for expressive freedom and why I pursued a PhD, I was confronted with ‘not belonging’ when I started at UBC – I was/am in a non-traditional academic position and I convinced myself that my colleagues disrespected me, that I didn’t belong to the insider club.

The past year has taken me on a journey where I have had to dig deep into unpacking and understanding what I mean by belonging. I don’t have the answer for you, but I do know what it is not: it is not all the materialistic items we are told we need to make us happy, it is not in the buying into societal institutions because that is what is expected, it is not about finding people at the ‘same stage in life’ as you, it is not about fitting in with what you think your colleagues value. It is not any of these things if you are not being completely honest in who you are, and that is key. I said I do not have the answer and that is a good thing because I should not claim to have a solution that fits all, I would then just be doing the same as consumer culture and social institutions tell us, that there is one way.

My journey is far from complete, and I am certain it is a journey that will last until I draw my last breath, but I have found a sense of peace and that sense of peace is not in ‘a sense of belonging’ but rather in being ok with ‘not belonging’. The secret behind ‘not belonging’ is letting go of the fear of being alone and it is about acceptance. Returning to the second Fringe show I went to on Friday – any of us can feel completely alone even when surrounded by people, even when in a situation which society deems acceptable ‘for our age or position in life’; loneliness is a real feeling and I am a social creature and I often feel lonely, a lot lately, but I no longer feel alone. I no longer feel alone because of the second piece of my journey thus far: acceptance. I surround myself (physically and virtually) with people who accept me for whom I am and I can truly see that because I have also learned that in letting go of my own fear of being alone, I can accept others for who they are. I now walk away from interactions or people who are trying to tell me that I am not enough or that I should aspire to get somewhere or be something, that doesn’t interest me because all I have is who I am and I want to make the most of it.

I said I do not have any answers and I don’t, but I can offer some lessons from my own journey thus far: surround yourself with people who you feel you are truly yourself with, who have no expectations of you except for you to be who you are, and with whom you can be completely raw and open and they can be with you. 

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