“It is not until we are lost that we begin to find ourselves.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
I’ve spent most of my life feeling like I’m standing outside the circle.
Not always, but whenever I step back and look at my entire life, the thread that has been running is the feeling of being on the outside looking in.
I think this feeling drove me for a long time. I wanted to prove something, earn my place through effort and excellence. I wanted to be the person that people were glad to know.
I pushed myself in sports, tried to make great plays to get appreciation from the audience. I dreamed of playing my bass guitar with such power that people listening would feel it running through them. I built my resume and did my best to become a great teacher, the kind that changes lives.
These desires come from deep within me. The love of the game, the pull of music and the joy of teaching well were true expressions of my heart. But woven into it, underneath it all, was also the desire for connection.
Every one of those aspirations came true in one form or another and I gave myself completely to them. What I found inside them though was something I didn’t expect. I could not externalize the existence I was striving for.
I was in my early twenties when I came to Philadelphia for graduate school, not knowing it yet and carrying all of this with me. A friend brought me to a party one cold night, a gathering of close friends in someone’s backyard, and we were all standing around a pool.
The group was chatting away and enjoying the evening. I tried to move from one small conversation to another, searching for a way out Nothing worked
An hour or so later, I stood at the edge of the pool, and something shook me.
Without a second thought I went from edge to edge. fully dressed The cold water closed over me, and I stayed down for a few long seconds.
My friend was embarrassed. I was numb. We drove home in silence, me wet in the passenger seat.
I couldn’t explain what I had done, not that night and not for many days afterward. The memory sat with me for thirty years, resurfacing from time to time, painful and strange. And beneath its weirdness was something else, a level of embarrassment that I hadn’t yet dared to look directly at.
The embarrassment went deeper than acting. Underneath it was something I hid even from myself, how badly I wanted to stay that night and that wanting left me.
For years, I carried shame on that night, as if it was a weakness or flaw in my character to be seen and evaluated. It took me decades to realize that the need itself was not the problem.
I read something a while ago that got me thinking. For almost all of human history, people lived in small groups, twenty or thirty or fifty, and your place in that group was everything. It determines whether you ate, whether you were protected, whether you and your children survived.
I’ve also read that the brain processes withdrawal pain through the same pathways it uses for physical trauma. So, while my cold plunge was strange and unexpected to me, it was also a response to something ancient and true.
Researchers who study it put the need to be included in the same category as hunger and thirst. Every human being has needs, whether we recognize them or not.
I knew none of this when I stepped into that pool in Philadelphia. And after much painful reflection, I now realize that I was not needy in a shameful way. I was just a painfully lonely young man in a crowd.
I think, in that moment, I chose the rejection I could control over the rejection I couldn’t. Cold water was honest. It didn’t pretend I belonged, and if I was going to be ostracized, I decided to be completely.
What I’ve come to see is that the humiliation I felt at the party and then went on to think about it for so many years was part of me becoming what I’ve always said I was.
Because I know what it’s like to feel invisible, and I know the shame of feeling it, I recognize that struggle in other people and I can help. I’ve lived too close to the pain of isolation to mistake it for something else or to look past it when someone else is suffering.
Thirty years has been enough time to see patterns in my life come into focus. And now what I’m seeing is that the feeling I’ve tried to escape for so long is giving me insight into something I wouldn’t have otherwise understood: in one way or another, we’re all needed.
Today when I walk into a room, be it a party, a family gathering or at work, my attention is drawn to a person standing alone.
Who was laughing a little too enthusiastically at something that wasn’t funny. One is connected to their phone because it is easier than sitting there without a purpose. Hoping tonight will be different and wondering who will be.
I know that person. I was that person, and in some ways, I still am.
The feeling of not belonging doesn’t disappear because you become aware of it and work on it, at least it didn’t for me. It gets easier at times, but it never leaves completely. And I stopped waiting for the day.
What I found instead was that pain becomes something you can bear without being crushed by it. It becomes a part of who you are that you learn to accept, relate to, and even draw strength from, because it keeps you honest about what it means to be human.
That’s my life journey. What I want people to know and feel in their bones when they walk out of a room is this: You are seen. You are heard. You are precious. And you are loved.
I have to be honest with myself about this word limit. When I hid parts of myself I was afraid to show, no reassurance from the outside could fully reach me. And sometimes the people around me weren’t looking hard enough to find out what was good in me.
I had to admit that what I longed for wasn’t always blocked by my own walls. Sometimes it’s just not being given. Let’s face it, the world can be a cold and cruel place at times.
I’ve learned that we tend to give others what we need ourselves, and that’s certainly true for me. The pain I felt didn’t just hurt me. It showed me what I was made for.
Not everyone will see you for who you really are. Some people will be tuned to a different frequency, and it will hurt. But the more honestly you present yourself to the world, the more you give the right people a chance to get to know you.
That belief has been tested and proven in my own life. In my twenties, I thought it would be fun to bring homemade key lime pie to a New Year’s Eve party for people who tried hard to look cool. It’s kind of like bringing baked goods to a nightclub and a perfect example of my off-beat sense of humor.
A young woman laughed out loud when I offered the pie and joined me for a slice at the kitchen table. We talked and enjoyed each other’s company until the party faded into the background.
That young woman became my wife.
We’ve been together for over twenty-five years, and she told me she never liked key lime pie. The truth was, she just wanted to know the man who was brave enough to be in a room full of people pretending to be someone else.
The qualities that make you the most are visible to people who know how to look. You have a place in this world and now, as you are, once you have not earned it. And when you show others the truth about you, you give the right people a chance to find you.
Seeing people, helping them to open up and truly belong, is not something I chose. I found it by following my own wound, my own need for the same thing, on the other side of it. It’s an ongoing journey with hard falls, but it’s the most valuable thing I’ve ever stumbled upon.
The young man I was was not broken when I stepped into that pool in Philadelphia. I, in my own wounded and wordless way, was searching for some truth. And even though I still struggle with belonging from time to time, I have found it.
I learned to be myself. I have learned to see the pain that people carry but rarely name and recognize it without judgment because I know it from the inside. That perspective changed me from someone who grasped for a place to belong to someone who tried to create that place for others.
The outdoors is a tough place to learn. but teaches to see.
about Daniel H. Shapiro
Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is a keynote speaker, author and consultant. He is passionate about human connection and the stories we carry with us. For more information about his book, 5 Practices of the Caring CounselorOr check out her mentoring and speaking services yourinherentgoodness.com.
