“We don’t begin to find ourselves until we are lost.” ~Henry David Thoreau
I’ve spent most of my life feeling like I’m standing just outside the circle.
Not always, but whenever I step back and look at my entire life, the thread running through it gives me the feeling of looking in from the outside.
I think that feeling inspired me for a long time. I wanted to prove something, earn my place through effort and excellence. I wanted to be the kind of person people would be happy to know.
I pushed myself in games, trying to play my best game to get applause from the crowd. I dreamed of playing my bass guitar with so much energy that people listening felt it moving through them. I prepared my resume and did everything possible to become a great teacher, a teacher who changes lives.
Those desires came from somewhere deep inside me. The love of sports, the fascination of music, and the joy of teaching well were all true expressions of my heart. But in all this, beneath all this, there was also hidden the desire for connection.
Each of those aspirations became reality in one way or another, and I gave myself completely to them. However, what I found inside them was something I did not expect. The belonging I was striving for was not something I could achieve from the outside.
When I came to Philadelphia for graduate school, I was in my early twenties, still carrying all this with me without even realizing it. One cold night a friend brought me to a party, there was a gathering of close friends in someone’s backyard and we all stood around a pool.
The group was chatting and enjoying the evening. I tried to move from one small conversation to another, to find a way. Nothing worked.
About an hour later, I was standing at the edge of the pool, and something shook me.
Without thinking, I went off the edge and into the deep end. fully dressed. The cold water closed over me, and I remained under there for a few long seconds.
My friend was embarrassed. I shocked. We drove home in silence, me soaking wet in the passenger seat.
I couldn’t explain what I did, neither that night nor for a long time afterward. That memory stayed with me for thirty years, surfacing from time to time, painful and strange. And beneath the strangeness of it, there was something else, a layer of embarrassment that I hadn’t yet mustered the courage to look directly at.
The embarrassment went deeper than this act itself. Underneath it was something that I had hidden even from myself, namely how badly I wanted to be connected to her that night and how much that desire had exposed me.
For years I felt embarrassed about that night, as if needing to be seen and valued was a weakness or flaw in my character. It took me decades to understand that a need is never a problem.
Some time ago I read something that made me think. For almost all of human history, people lived in small groups, twenty or thirty or fifty people, and your place in that group was everything. It determines whether you eat, whether you stay safe, whether you and your children survive.
I’ve also read that the brain processes the pain of being ostracized through the same pathways it uses for physical injury. So, while my cold plunge was strange and unexpected even for me, it was also a response to something ancient and true.
Researchers who have studied this have placed need in the same category as hunger and thirst. Needs that every human being has, whether we recognize it or not.
When I stepped into that pool in Philadelphia I didn’t know anything about it. And after much painful reflection, I now realize that I was not shamefully needy. I was just a young man who was painfully alone in a crowd.
I think, in that moment, I chose the rejection I could control over the rejection I couldn’t control. The cold water was honest. It didn’t pretend that I belonged to the caste, and if I was being ostracized, I decided to be completely that way.
What I’ve come to see is that the humiliation I endured at the party, and after thinking about it for so many years, was part of me becoming who I always wanted to be.
Because I know what it’s like to feel ignored, and I know the shame of feeling it, I can recognize that struggle in other people, and I can help. I have lived so close to the pain of separation that I mistake it for something else or look beyond it when someone else is suffering.
Thirty years is enough time to see the patterns of my life coming into focus. And what I see now is that the feeling I spent so long trying to avoid was giving me insight into something I couldn’t otherwise understand: In one way or another, we all need belonging.
Today when I walk into a room, be it a party, a family function, or at work, my attention is drawn to the person standing alone.
The one who’s laughing a little too eagerly at something that wasn’t that funny. Who is attached to their phone because it’s easy to just sit there aimlessly. The one who came expecting something different tonight and who has begun to wonder if it will.
I know that person. I’ve been that person, and in some ways, I’m still that person.
This sense of belonging doesn’t disappear just because you become aware of it and work on it, at least not for me. It sometimes gets easier, but never goes away completely. And I’ve stopped waiting for the day when that happens.
What I’ve found instead is that pain becomes something you can tolerate without getting crushed. It becomes a part of your personality that you learn to accept, connect with, and even draw strength from, because it keeps you honest about what it means to be human.
This has become my life’s journey. I want people to know this when they walk out of the room and feel it in their bones: You are visible. Your views are heard. You are valuable. And you are loved.
I have to be honest with myself about the limitations of those words. When I was hiding the parts of me I was afraid to show, no amount of reassurance from the outside could fully reach me. And sometimes the people around me didn’t notice enough what was good in me.
I had to accept that the belonging I craved was not always blocked by my own walls. Sometimes it was not being offered at all. Let’s face it, the world can be a cold and cruel place sometimes.
I’ve learned that we give to others what we need most ourselves, and that’s certainly true for me. The pain I experienced didn’t just injure me. It showed me what I was made for.
Not everyone will be able to see you as you really are. Some people will be tuned to a different frequency, and this will cause harm. 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 where people were trying hard to look cool. It was kind of like bringing baked goods to a nightclub and was a perfect example of my unique sense of humor.
When I presented the pie a young woman laughed out loud and sat down with me at the kitchen table to take a slice. We talked and enjoyed each other’s company until the party faded into the background.
That girl became my wife.
We’ve been together for over twenty-five years, and since then she’s told me she never liked Key Lime Pie. The truth was, she just wanted to know the guy who was brave enough to present himself as someone else in a room full of people.
The qualities that make you most attractive are visible to those who know how to look. Your place in this world is here and now, just as you are, not once have you earned it. And when you show others what is true about you, you give the right people a chance to find you.
The call to see people, to help them open up and really connect with them, is not something I chose. I found it following my own wound, my own need for the same thing, to the other side of it. It has been an ongoing journey, there have been difficulties along the way, but it is the most valuable thing I have ever come across.
When I got into that pool in Philadelphia I was young, not broken. I was, in my own sad and wordless way, searching for some truth. And although I still struggle with belonging from time to time, I have found it.
I have learned to connect with myself. I have learned to see the pain that people endure but rarely name and recognize it without judgment because I know it inside out. That scene changed me from a person who was looking for a place, to a person who tries to create that place for others.
The outdoors is a tough place to learn. But it teaches you to see.
About Daniel H. Shapiro
Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is a keynote speaker, author, and mentor. He is passionate about human connections and the stories we carry with us. For more information about his book, 5 Practices of the Caring GuruOr check out his consulting and speaking services yourinherentgoodness.com.
