When I think of belonging, it is like two dogs tied together wanting to run in opposite directions. One dog wants so desperately to belong to a pack it would run toward whatever looks welcoming. The other is so suspicious of groups that it mistrusts and wants to flee anyone whose agenda seems suspect—and to this dog, most agendas are suspect. Yet in running away from each other, the tether binding them both ties tight, and they falter in their missions, and they turn and attack each other in their longings to be free to seek what they desire.

In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben talks about the difference between trees deeply rooted in an established forest versus the “city kids.” In the forest, the trees connect with each other through root, leaf, and an extensive mycelial network that helps them to know about the other trees. Trees rich in resources can send nutrients and support to those having a rougher season. But urban trees are unsupported and unconstrained. They grow too quickly and die sooner. They cannot help each other because their roots do not connect.

One of the manifestations of the war of belonging within me was intense anxiety and social pressure. When interacting with people I didn’t know, I was afraid to take any risks because I didn’t know the rules and expectations. I was afraid of alienating them by crossing a line I didn’t know about, so I learned to be quiet and fade into the background until I had a sense of the culture. If people were too warm, I backed away. When making small-talk, I would shut down and get overwhelmed with self-critique about how stupid I sounded, or how I didn’t know what next to say.

The isolation of COVID enacted a strange alchemy. One thing I learned was how much I needed human connection, though I deeply enjoy my alone time. When I re-emerged into making small talk with other people, I realized it was so much easier than I’d thought. All you do is talk about stuff. If they’re not interested in that stuff you talk about other stuff. It doesn’t even matter what stuff you talk about because the whole point is just to connect and build rapport. I thought I had to be interesting, or witty, or profound, and that made it much harder to connect and probably pushed people away who read my hesitation as aloofness rather than a desperate desire to figure out how to connect.

The other side of that, was realizing that when I felt the conversation was boring or foundering, it wasn’t all on me. That’s a two way problem. The other person isn’t showing up with presence or authenticity. They’re not investing energy into the connection, perhaps mirroring the lack of energy on my side, or perhaps for other reasons. I you take the risk to be honest and connect, and they choose to hide and obfuscate, there’s not much else you can do about them. The real question becomes how much you want to invest in this connection.

Along with this liberating new perspective on small-talk came the extension toward belonging. What if I just belonged because I’m here? What if belonging wasn’t something to run toward or away from but something just to be in and cultivate in the connections that really work for me?

Focusing on those connections has been deeply restorative and important, and after a time I find myself ready to expand again. I start to see that when you only surround yourself with people who validate and love you, the rest of the world looks really scary. That begins to have diminishing returns. We lose some of our hardiness and practice in the face of adversity. Supportive relationships should feel like a safe harbor that will always be there to welcome us as we return from our adventures, to regroup and relax. But if we never leave, it starts to feel stale. We perhaps begin to find little faults in the harbor or fixate on the little moments of invalidation and unsafety that are inevitable in human communication.

But that’s what belonging brings us. A harbor. A safety net. A crew that has our back. A place we can tend and nurture, and a place from which we can launch and return. And it’s made of these little moments of connecting, of feeling our ruptures and risking reconnection, or finding the people and places safe enough for us to risk vulnerability. For so long I thought community was something that had to be made through laborious work with just the right people, just the right rules, the right shared values. But rules and work are the head. Connection comes from the heart. The most perfect guidelines and group agreements fail when the heart is not engaged. It’s worth, for a time, dropping the expectations and finding how the heart wants to connect today.