When You Want to Stand out What You Really Want is to Belong
The sense of belonging is a basic need, alright it’s not down there with eating, sleeping and whatever you need to survive, but it’s a base for achievements, creativity and authenticity.
None wants to be yet another pigeon. There are billions of human beings out there and you believe that you are unique. You want to be unusual and exceptional.
You want to stand out because you want to belong.
There is no sense of belonging in being a Homo sapience. But imagine you find yourself on other planet thousands of light years away from Earth and you meet a group of earthlings in a bar. No doubt you approach them and highly likely you end up spending a great evening discussing the oddly shaped aliens and reminiscing about the perfect gravity times.
In your home country, you don’t feel any special connection to a fellow public transport passenger. However, when you live in a foreign country and spot a person reading a book in your mother tongue, you’ll feel almost as if you’d share a common secret.
At school, I did well in math and this clearly helped me to stand out, which I enjoyed at first. Later, it made me isolated and eventually lonely.
From exceptional to a weirdo there is only one step.
Luckily, I got excepted to a special math high school and got to meet other math “weirdos” there. I wasn’t the best in the class, maybe not even one of the best. But up to now, it may be the happiest years of my life. I felt belonging.
You don’t care about being alone. You don’t care about belonging to a mass. You care about belonging to a special group that shares your uniqueness.
This gives you the energy to achieve, accomplish and be successful.
