Longing for Belonging

Forget fitting in...it's frustratingly fickle and fundamentally fruitless.

Greetings, friends. Back not so much by popular demand as by my need to be in year-end slow-down mode is a post I published a year ago today. It’s an evergreen topic though, I promise. I hope you enjoy.

Ready? Let’s go.

I hate to tell you, friends, but the holidays aren’t yet over, and the earworms have made a resurgence. It’s as though they heard me congratulating myself on making it through that multi-round slugfest I had with Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town and decided I needed to be knocked down a peg or two.

The most recent earworm onslaught happened just a couple days ago. There I was, ambling along peacefully enough on my daily constitutional, casually cogitating about this and that, when whammo! In popped Rudolph with his nose so bright, reporting for Christmas Eve duty.

“If you’re always trying to be normal, you’ll never know how amazing you can be.” [Quote by Maya Angelou; Photo by Abeer Zaki on Unsplash]

It didn’t matter one jot to Rudolph that it wasn’t foggy, or that there was plenty of light. He was seemingly unphased about my not being Santa and my obvious lack of sleigh and adjacent cargo. No, he was on a mission and clear in his conviction. He would guide me through the night, and that was that.

Let’s be clear, though. I didn’t go willingly, and suffering was involved. Rudolph tenaciously tried my last nerve from the very start of tune time. But after the first 10 rounds or so, I lost my resolve and gave up the fight. It was obvious that I was more likely to find a polar bear in a snowstorm than I was to locate Rudolph’s off switch.

I’ll level with you though, friends. This was no act of sabotage on Rudolph’s part. I may not have invited the intrusion per se, but I had certainly opened the door to it. Just before he showed up, I had, in fact, been contemplating one of my favorite and most frequent thoughts: the difference between fitting in and belonging.

And it was at this point that Rudolph emerged. As you may recall, Rudolph was, by all accounts, the most famous reindeer of all. Why? Because he didn’t fit in with the other reindeer!

I probably don’t have to remind you, but Rudolph was the only reindeer — in all of recorded reindeer history — born with a schnoz like a fire engine’s beacon. This was an anomaly that caused him no end of ridicule and humiliation by his reindeer peers, mind you. They regarded it with great suspicion and perhaps a little envy. In an ideal world, these youngsters might have asked a few friendly questions. Or gotten some sensitivity training from the adult reindeer. Or maybe even experimented with glowing up their own look. But instead? Instead, they took the low road. They laughed and called poor Rudolph names and refused to let him join in any reindeer games.

And what does Rudolph do with this? It’s not good, friends. Under the duress of intense bullying, and with a dearth of allies (not even his parents have his back), Rudolph hangs his head in shame and sets off on a forced march of self-imposed exile. Into a raging blizzard, no less. Before long, he joins forces with Hermey, an elf who had been similarly ridiculed and ostracized in Santa’s workshop, apparently because of his decidedly un-elfin preferences. After a close brush with the Abominable Snowmonster, the two of them narrowly escape on an ice flow and find themselves castaways on the island of misfit toys.

Perhaps Rudolph’s story could have ended right there. After all, he and Hermey finally fit in among the other misfits. But fitting in wasn’t the denouement of this drama, friends. Of course it was not! No proper hero’s journey would settle for merely fitting in amongst a colony of exiles on a remote island (no, Gilligan’s Island was not a proper hero’s journey, friends).

<On the off chance that you don’t know where this is going, consider this your official spoiler alert.>

Long story short, owing to some very clever cosmic choreography, a thick fog settles in on Christmas eve, threatening to cancel Christmas. Santa, perched precariously on the brink of despair, has a stroke of genius and remembers Rudolph’s incandescent nose. And voilà! Rudolph’s liability is transformed into a superpower!

Rudolph graciously lets bygones be bygones and accepts Santa’s “invitation” (he was basically voluntold) to lead the reindeer team through dangerously low visibility with the brilliance of his nose beam. He then deftly proceeds to save children the world over (as we’ve previously established, only the ones who haven’t cried or pouted, of course) from waking up without any presents on Christmas morning. In the process, he redeems his parents’ reputations, manages to get the girl (remember Clarice?), and at long last (but not least), finds belonging among the other reindeer.

“The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.” [Quote by W. Somerset Maugham; Photo by Jack B on Unsplash]

I loved this story as a child. As an adult, I see approximately 87 problematic ingredients baked into this holiday treat. I shan’t list them all (click here if you want a variety of opinions on the matter), but instead leave you with what I see as the 7 most toxic of the bunch:

1. ableism

2. bullying

3. emotional abuse

4. toxic masculinity

5. implicit homophobia

6. glorification of consumerism

7. productivity and punctuality at any and all cost

Notwithstanding all the foregoing, which to be fair, was culturally de rigueur for the 1960s (not an excuse, but more like an inconvenient truth), Rudolph’s story does a pretty decent job of illustrating the basic difference between fitting in and belonging. And that basic difference, as I extrapolate it, goes something like this:

Fitting in typically demands some degree of self-abandonment. Belonging, on the other hand, requires self-acceptance.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

What does it mean to “fit in?” What, or who, are we fitting in with? The short answer seems to be that we’re trying to live up (or down) to the normative social standards and mores of the culture at large, as well as the subcultures of our communities. We figure out what’s considered valuable and desirable, and then we try to do, or be, or get those things. Or we try to mask the ways in which we struggle to be, do, or have those things.

When we’re “fitting in,” we’re focused on external validation. This requires that we really stay on our toes, because we’re aiming at a moving target. Even the most firmly rooted humans find things changing around them over time. People come and go. Things evolve and devolve. Keeping up with the Joneses is an endurance event, friends.

Now belonging is different sort of a thing altogether. It’s a terra firma sort of feeling that no matter what we do or don’t do, and no matter what we have or don’t have, we are categorically legitimate and unconditionally accepted. Unlike fitting in, belonging affords us a safe internal space where we can rest securely, regardless of external opinions or expectations.

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” [Quote by Maya Angelou; Photo by Zoritsa Valova on Unsplash]

In fact, I’m of a mind that belonging is most securely anchored at the level of the self. That’s not to say we can only live happily in isolation on our own little island of misfit toys. No, no. We humans are social animals, and isolation (not to be confused with restorative solitude) can be more of a prison than a sanctuary. At the same time, it’s true that I’m the only person I’ll be in ongoing relationship with from my first breath til my last. And if I belong with myself, fitting in is no longer a priority for me.

I say this out of personal experience, friends. As a queer and trans person, I’ve had many Rudolphian experiences with not fitting in. I don’t mean merely feeling like I didn’t fit in, I mean I literally don’t fit in to the cis-hetero normative standards of our current culture. For a long time, this had me swimming up a steady stream of anguish. Swimming up any stream isn’t easy, but especially not when you’re spending so much energy self-flagellating, self-gaslighting, and flat-out self-abandoning. Like Rudolph, I eventually wound up taking the route of self-exile.

It was in the deep freeze of self-exile where I eventually found a sense of self-belonging. That’s also where I discovered that while I often don’t fit in, I always belong. My birth was an invitation to life that my soul accepted, and so I belong, regardless of what society might tell me.

I think the real punchline of Rudolph’s story is that the places where we don’t fit in are the places where we are most powerful. They’re the wellspring of our essential authenticity. And when we deny them in an effort to fit in, we disempower ourselves and deprive the world of the unique gifts we have to offer.

Alright, friends. That’s it for 2024. Wishing you a safe and earworm-free New Year. And, of course, a sturdy sense of self-belonging.