"Keep your eyes open. Stay in brave pursuit of wonder. Never let this busy world make you feel you are too small to belong"

For the rest of the month, start strong.
Let no one and nothing
make you feel like you are not good enough
or that you do not belong.
It does not matter how good
they are at what they do
you still belong here.

“Belong” simply means to be a part of something. It means to know where, when, and how you fit. However, even though we know this, it is all too easy to focus on the places where we do not belong. It is all too easy to turn on our attention to the doors that have shut or the tables where there was simply no room for us.

But here’s the truth: You may not be a part of a certain group or community, or you may feel at times that you are at the fringes of where you want to be, but that does not stop you from belonging in this world.

I don’t know if you have known what it’s like to feel unseen, betrayed, unloved, or disrespected in some way lately, but all of these are things that can make us feel small and unworthy of truly belonging in this way. Whether it be a friendship or romantic breakup, a loss of a someone or something you care about, or just an overall vagueness about your life, there’s something about that feeling of separation or disconnection that can become too much to bear.

In those moments or seasons of life, I hope you can keep your eyes open to the places where you do belong. Even though you might miss the way things were and you might long for being included in the places where you used to belong, I hope that you can still believe: there will be other spaces. There will be other people. As long as you are living, there will be other experiences that are different than where you were before.

Keep your eyes open. Stay in brave pursuit of wonder. Never let this busy world make you feel you are too small or not enough to belong. And it’s okay if it takes strength to do this. It’s okay if after being let down or left out, it takes a little courage to get up and try once more. You might have fears and reservations about the new people you meet the or new spaces you enter into because you there’s always this fear that you will get hurt again, but don’t let it stop you. Make the brave choice to believe: through it all, you still belong.

I cannot tell you what the future will look like, but I can tell you that as long as you are breathing you belong in this world. And because you belong in this world, there will be places within it that welcome you. Perhaps it might not be with the group or position you thought you would be in, but it will be just for you. Maybe you have longed to be a part of a community, but you actually feel called to start one yourself. Perhaps you don’t feel like you belong in your family, but you were meant to be family to someone else. This does not mean that you have to leave every relationship behind and that there is no room for things to be healed in time, but it does mean that you are not limited to feeling that you don’t belong. Even if you are landlocked, and you can’t travel the way you want to. Even if you don’t feel like you don’t have the personality to keep up with others, the more you begin to choose to bravely keep your eyes open, the more you will begin to see: all around you, there are places for you to belong, and help others belong, too.

More tomorrow…
Sincerely,
Morgan Harper Nichols