Winning the Struggle to Belong 2-25-10

Anderson, South Carolina

In the recovery world we speak of our desperate bids to belong and how these counter-productive efforts end up casting us into a prison of unremitting loneliness and isolation. We think we have to stand out in some fashion. So often we attempted to dominate people in order to get what we wanted from them and after a time these people had enough of our oppression and bolted for the exits. It really does prove to be lonely “at the top.” Other times some of us were like beaten puppy dogs crawling around the edges of groups, whimpering for attention. We used up many people with our profound neediness. These people simply could give no more to us and they left our lives, exhausted. We found ourselves alone and frightened once again. Our greatest efforts to belong had failed us completely.

We live in a culture that tells us that to belong we have to be number one. We subsist in a society where we need to be the survivor on a reality show, the fastest in the Olympics, the richest, the smartest, the most talented, the most what ever. We need to have the biggest, the newest, the oldest, the rarest. Only those who do really count. Only those who win get to belong. Silver medalists don’t get multi-million dollar endorsements, even though their times are within a hundredth or even a thousandth of a second of those winning the gold. Coming in second or even worse, being average, means almost nothing in our competitive culture. If one doe not have a trophy wife, a quiver full of kids and an even larger quiver full of grand kids, one does not count for much.

A young girl here in town is presently on one of the reality shows and every Monday night groups of people converge on a local pub and a playhouse to watch her on the big screen, trying to be the best and survive for another week. One of the contestants was so stressed by the experience that she was filmed vomiting before her performance of the week. Alas, there is always someone better, smarter, faster, richer, more talented, with better hair. All but one will be ignominious losers.

Even good things can become tyranny. I frantically build Habitat houses, serve Meals on Wheels, build sets for the theater, help people in recovery, write books, paint epic canvases, keep up correspondence, make calls, everything that might give me cause to think I merit space on the planet. I hope my performance will be judged worthy enough to allow me to stay on the reality show until next week.

As I sit here having watched my investments collapse, wondering if I will ever again have good employment, I speculate if I will ever again get to be part of what is going on, not realizing that most of what is going on is truly toxic to one’s serenity. I am facing up to the possibility that I am going to be second or even worse, just average.

Average? Perhaps there is vast freedom and belonging in being average. In one of the most beloved books of recovery, a quote states, “We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us.”

Our culture tells us we need to stand on top of the heap or to try and extract from the heap by being a bottom feeder in our neediness. We live in a conflicted culture of entitlement and domination.

One of the most beloved TV shows in recent decades was “Cheers”, a happy portrayal of regular people just getting together and laughing with each other and helping each other solve the daily crises of their lives. The characters were portrayals of average people living in the middle of the pack and enjoying a sense of belonging with each other. This comedy had a profoundly serious message that seems ever more lost on the culture. I myself have been a conspirator in the toxic message of the consumer culture to a far greater degree than I ever fathomed. I am just now coming into enlightenment as to how tyrannized I have been by this.

Perhaps we can recover a sense of community and belonging, if we are willing to just be average. I sense great relief in the offing from releasing my desperate bids to be above average. I am going to look for ways to be absolutely run of the mill and love other people in their middling ways, free of the tyranny to bludgeon them towards perfection.

Serenity is after all the great prize and it goes to all finishers, not just those who come in first.