I wrote a post in April 2024, on “Not Fitting In: A calling of your individuality”. Something I wrote in that post, I want to repeat here:
We all would like to feel a sense of belonging, and acceptance. What is love, if not a space where you perfectly fit, belong, and are accepted? I think we all dream of a space where nothing feels out of place. The desire to fit in is the longing for love and acceptance.
Here I am revisiting the old wound of not fitting in, not belonging again in this post, but with a different perception of it. This is proof that if you simply remain aware of your wounds, meeting them like a friend, not with a way to win but with a way to understand, it changes the form. It does not heal in a fairy tale way; we think it should, but it changes form. You stop seeing it as something broken in you to be fixed, like it is your enemy. You see the wound – the pain of not fitting in more clearly, as an intimate part of you.
We arrive at the word seeing. Just as our own inner wounds want to be seen for what they are; so too we as a person want to be seen as we are. I read that in Kazakh culture, rather than telling someone ‘I love you’ or ‘I like you’, they say ‘Men Seni Zhaksy Koremin’ – that means I see you well/clearly. And in this, there is a truth that one of the most fundamental human desires is to be loved and to love. But love seems too much of an abstract word. So one of the most fundamental desires is to be seen, and to see someone clearly as they are.
The Longing to be Seen
The desire to fit in is the longing to be loved and accepted – and in truth, the longing to be seen as you are. But this, too, sounds vague. So here is something more precise – it is the desire to be seen as all of you, not bits of you.
There is a darkness to you as deep as your light.
There is an unkindness to you as extreme as your kindness.
There is an anger in you as extreme as your sadness.
There is evil in you as big as your goodness.
There is fear in you to the same proportion as your confidence.
There is a strength in you as extreme as your gentleness.
There is a wound in you as big as your gifts.
There is a stupidity in you as extreme as your intelligence.
And each of us has these unique, weird contradictions. There are 1000s of contradictions in you, and in those contradictions, you are not a hypocrite but a full human being. Like a plant that has always been a full whole plant even when it was small – a half of it below the ground and another half above the ground, and it will always be as long as it is alive, small or big. The small plant is as full of contradictions as a full-grown tree. You too are contradictions – humane and whole.
So the longing to be seen is for someone to see you as a whole being, with all of your contradictions. All of your truth, not half of it. This is the longing, this is the desire.
The False Conditioning
There are two false conditioning in the human psyche – quiet, poisonous and even celebrated in many spiritual circles.
The first one is:
The one who loves is higher, and the one who is loved is lower.
The one who gives is noble, and the one who receives is somehow smaller, indebted and lesser. In the language of this writing, the one who sees is superior, and the one being seen is fortunate to be looked at.
You can smell this lie everywhere: by teachers, gurus, songs, movies repeating the same false conditioning that giving love makes you a saint and receiving love makes you a beggar. And this is an absolute lie.
This first lie gives birth to the second, even uglier one.
If giving love is a favour, a generous act from above, then receiving love must be something you earn. You must deserve the gaze.
So the one who wants to be seen, who wants to fit in, who wants to belong must do something to earn it. Must do something to deserve it. So we have a deep, deep conditioning inside that we must – polish ourselves, perform, achieve, become thinner, wiser, funny, confident, attractive, calmer, spiritual, more successful – anything so that finally someone will decide that we are worthy enough to be seen.
And this is where love is not love anymore – it is a business deal. I will see you – if you behave like this. I will look at you if you prove yourself. Make yourself small enough, good enough, rich enough, safe enough, impressive enough, kind enough to be worthy of my seeing.
And from these two false conditioning – anyone who wants to be loved, seen, fit or belong starts the chase of love.
The Chase of Love
There is a misunderstanding that the chase of love is out of fear. Not at all!! Chase of love is out of a false understanding that we can buy love with our performances. We can buy true belonging, true fitting in by applying cheap tricks, by trying to modify our personality, by doing something in life.
Here is a question? Why do you think you should be loved?
If your answer is: because I am kind, because I am broken, because I am rich, because I am poor, because I am beautiful, because I am ugly, because I am confident, because I am not confident, because I suffered, because I achieved, because I exist, because I don’t exist. And the list can go on.
Then it is still a business. We are bargaining for love by showing only the parts of ourselves that we think make us worthy of being loved and being seen. But somewhere deep down, there is a knowing that we are simply making a business deal. Even if it is a faint knowing, it is still a restlessness that is there. So it is a quiet pain that lingers within. And the pain remains – relationships come and go, friendships come and go, people come and go; the pain remains.
And you can reduce the whole of humanity, and our frantic running around doing things, to a simple act of trying to buy love. to bargain for it. And the society is, in fact, made in such a way that there is an illusion that you can actually purchase respect, belonging, fitting in, and be seen. But here is a quiet truth no one tells: the quiet restlessness and the inner pain never go away – for you are never truly seen. You are only seen in bits. You can purchase everything in the world – but you can never truly purchase what you really, really want. Purchase, I don’t mean with money, but with behaving in a certain way. You can’t have what you really want by some tricks.
The Realisation of Falsehood
Here are some falsehood that dawns on you as you start looking deeper:
A singer is performing in a concert. 10,000 people came to hear her songs. How many really came to see her and hear her music? Maybe 1 or 2 or 10. Most simply would have gone because a famous singer is in town, and the other half went because their friends dragged them. So, only maybe 10 in 10000 could be there to truly appreciate the music. But the singer might live in an illusion that 10000 people came to see her.
We live in the social media era. Everyone posts on Instagram. Everyone wants to be seen. But we think if we are beautiful enough, fashionable enough, good-looking enough, smart enough, stylish enough, everyone will see us. So everyone is loud, as loud as they could be. And in this loudness, who is seeing who, everyone is busy trying to be seen. And anyone who is busy trying to be seen can’t see another, only compares themselves with another. So many times, the likes are not for you; it is for the ones liking – a reminder of what they lack.
Yes, in the ways of society, crowds can be brought by some means. But that does not mean that you belong to the crowd; you fit into the crowd, and the crowd sees you. The crowd of followers, likes, trends, respects, and claps are all counterfeit, and there is absolutely no way that crowd can give you what you truly desire. To be seen in your wholeness in all your contradictions.
As you start to become sensitive, you start to see this falsehood everywhere, almost like a 24×7 awareness. And in this awareness, there is a pain; the pain of not being seen, the pain of not fitting in, the pain of not belonging. So if you are really sensitive, and you have this constant lingering feeling of not fitting in, not belonging, not being seen – then know that it is real. It is the pain of everyone – they simply don’t know it yet. The only difference is that you are aware of this pain, and others are not. You are aware of the falsehoods belonging to society; groups, and most are sleepy to it.
A Privilege
So here is the truth: nobody really tells the child who is chasing love. There is absolutely no way you can trick love into your life; there is no way you can buy belonging, fitting in that you desire. Yes, it is painful – very, very painful to realise this, but it is the truth.
And know that to be truly seen, to truly belong, to truly fit in is a privilege.
For someone to see you, they have to have tasted life in ways that you have. They have to have wounds similar to yours; they have to have gifts similar to yours. They have to have gone through their own journey in life, which shaped them, that gave them experience, that showed them glimpses of life’s intricacy, life’s contradictions that you see. And they are flowing in their own ways like a river flowing in its own dance, and may they meet you for a certain amount of time in your river of life.
You can relax knowing that to be seen is a privilege, to be loved is a privilege, to truly belong is a privilege, and nothing you can actually do to be seen. To say do nothing is also wrong – for that would imply you still have to do nothing. You can only live. And to say that you can only live is also wrong – for that would imply you still have to perform living. That is where we enter the state of life beyond words. Living!!
Living
Some of us have been addicted, habituated, or trained to chase love from childhood. It has now become a 20, 30, 40-year addiction. A simple quote that ‘You can relax knowing that to be truly seen you have to do nothing’ will not be enough to deprogram your body and mind of the decades of habit. This, too, will take a decade, maybe, to reach the relaxation/living that I speak of. But if you can see the lies that I talked of in this post, an awakening starts in you.
The lie that the giver, or the seer, is better than the one who is receiving, and something starts in you automatically. Because this is the very foundation of chasing love and belonging.
Have you ever noticed how a teacher in class always keeps looking at the student who actually understands what he is talking about? Because without the right student, the teacher feels stupid, as if he is talking to hollow walls.
Is it not the most painful thing for a tree to have a full-grown ripe fruit, simply fall away, rot in the ground, and never have to touch a hungry mouth, enjoying the taste of the fruit?
There is no way that a giver is more noble than a receiver. There is no way that the one who is seeing or witnessing is higher than the one who is being witnessed or seen. Without a student teacher is meaningless; without beauty, witnessing is meaningless; without someone to hear, a song is meaningless; and without someone to receive, giving is meaningless.
So, what to do when we are in this void that feels painful? That feels lonely. The constant lingering pain of never feeling seen, belonging or fitting in. We can surrender to life and keep living life.
The moment we hear surrender, we immediately assume it is a passive way of living. But surrendering is living life moment to moment, and trusting the flow of life.
It is not the restless, anxious ways of life. It is not waiting for someone to come save us. It is not wishing or hoping for someone to complete us.
Yet it is also not the way of avoiding the pain by keeping ourselves endlessly busy. Some throw themselves into work, some into travelling, just to outrun the feeling. Surrendering is neither.
Surrendering is the way of awareness, simplicity and a quiet trust in the greater flow of life that is out of our control. And it can be as simple as:
Going about cleaning your home, cooking that meal you like, painting something you have always wanted to paint, writing that poem you have always thought of – yet fully feeling that there is a pain to this existence – that we all share collectively without exclusion.
The pain of not fitting in, not truly belonging, not truly being loved- is not only your pain, but it is also a collective pain. Like everyone on Instagram trying to be seen by performing in some way, so does everyone have traded parts of themselves trying to fit in, to belong, and to be loved. Most lack the sensitivity to feel this pain. So this pain too requires great sensitivity because it is the unfiltered pain of the collective- everyone, when the noises of the world stop. Everyone faces this pain one day or another – and most on their deathbed. So if you are really sensitive to this pain, consider yourself lucky that you see it right now.
You can live with carrying awareness to this feeling without doing anything about it. And you can give yourself permission to be everything that you are. You can give permission to live in your contradictions, in your good and bad, in all of your parts, not performing anymore in a certain way to be loved, not explaining your whole existence, why you should be seen, not begging the outside world and people to see you. Paradoxically, when you start to live freely in your own contradiction, you start to see yourself more clearly – and that feels like self-love.
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