Blog 27 Being Alone and Belonging (Gary)

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Being Alone and Belonging (Gary)

         Alone.

         Learning a way of being.

         Just being.

         I ask what is natural?

         What is real?

         Questions that have been a part of my life for so long.

The hardest thing in the world for me sometimes is to just be where I am.

When alone as a child I always kept my set of toy army men in a special corner of the living room and I would spend hours playing with them around the room.  My mother was okay with that as long as I always put them back in that special spot.  It turns out another man in our men’s group has pretty much the same story, and he tells me how he had collected over a thousand pieces of an army set similar to mine.  It makes me sad writing this, but so it was. The army we wish we had so we wouldn’t feel alone.  The sense of belonging to something larger than our selves is sometimes comforting even if the belonging is an illusion of love and connection. 

         What have you joined that you project the fantasy of belonging onto?  What sports team or corporate identity have you taken on belonging to out of a need to belong?  

        I have seen a number of men who drink together in a work or after-work situation as a way to self-medicate and feel connected. 

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