Belonging Is Not the Same as Fitting In

Fitting in asks a question: what do I need to become for these people to keep me? Belonging asks a different one: can I bring what I already am?

Most of us have spent years confusing the two, and we are very good at the first. We learn the accent of the room. We laugh a beat after everyone else so as not to be early. We keep the strange, luminous parts of ourselves in a drawer.

The cost is not only personal. A community made entirely of edited people has no idea what it actually believes, because nobody has ever tested it with something inconvenient.