Where do I belong?

Hi Everyone,

February was an interesting month for me. It marks a new book in my life and with that new book comes a lot of internal dialogue.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be alone even when surrounded by many. Ironically, despite me have this feeling of being alone in my experiences, studies show that 1 in 3 Americans have recently felt lonely – I guess I'm not so alone after all.

For me, I wonder how much of this feeling of loneliness stems from a lack of belonging? A question of "where do I belong?"

I believe in community. And that by building trust in and with community these feelings of not belonging can be tempered.

It's interesting that these feelings coincide with me running my first Intellectual Will readalong on StoryGraph (starting today until Saturday, April 12, 2025). This readalong is an opportunity for us to complete the Intellectual Will guided journal together and discuss self-discovery reflections.

It's perfect timing that I am hosting this readalong of the journal because I am overdue for my 3 year review and maybe some of answers I'm searching for, I will find in my reflections. I'm excited to go through the journal in community with people from across the world. I hope you will join me (If you don't already have the journal, you can get it on the website).

In other news, this month I went down a rabbit hole of many topics that happen to coincide with this thinking of belonging, community, and loneliness. The universe always brings me the concepts I need to read at the right time and provides the perfect way to connect them together.

I am forever wordsmithing the Learn.Grow.Pass concept and a few weeks ago, I wrote down the word "sensemaking". In looking up what it actually meant, I realized while I thought my wayfinding through the unknown was a "weakness", it's actually a leadership asset.
This sensemaking journey happened around the same time that I offered to serve as an interviewer for a Microsolidarity episode on Limicon (YouTube/Audio). Limicon is a co-created event that is exploring the paradox of the web. It taps into the emergent subculture of communities that have been forming over the years.
It's interesting that these subcultures are organized and connected by people who have the skill of cultural weaving the social fabrics that form our communities. Mostly they are forming as a way to build trust and belonging in a complex world.
These thoughts that I have are timely given that my former colleagues at Luminary Labs are working on building a multidimensional infrastructure project that taps into physical, digital, and social infrastructure development. They are designing a $2.2 million competition that imagines the future of learning. The 1 and 3 Americans that state they are lonely, mostly are young people. What would it look like to create learning environments that celebrated all types of thinkers and learners; even those who are sensemakers operating in the liminal spaces of the world? I definitely could have benefited from that learning landscape growing up.

My subject line was "where do I belong?" I have concluded that I belong in the liminal spaces, navigating the unknown. What about you? Where do you belong?

*** Lisa-Marie