We don’t connect to each other enough. We don’t acknowledge how we feel or what we need often enough. Growing up in the neighborhood, children feel pressured to assimilate and conform. Being different is a curse, not a blessing. Being different separates you from the group. You feel left out and rejected.
We take those basic norms and our core emotional responses to them with us into adulthood. Despite the fact that we can see the different people making money, launching businesses, and inventing new technologies, it’s hard to do anything with that information when your whole life revolves around a group of people who bonded over some common interest(s).
Rather than exploring and celebrating our differences, we tend to hide and reject the parts of ourselves that don’t fit the group dynamic. We become lesser versions of ourselves. We become partial people.
You were not meant to be a fraction. You were meant to be whole.