Solitude Standing

Welcome to Tuesday’s with Chel.

Each week Chel Micheline of Gingerblue will offer her perspectives on our Bliss Habits. Please enjoy the wisdom and clarity she offers.

I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being. -Hafiz

I grew up in several different “communities”- the community of family (both my father and mother come from large Italian families almost *all* my relatives lived nearby), the community of the little neighborhood we lived in, the community of Long Island and what it meant to live there and grow up there.

Within all these communities, I found my place. Life wasn’t always a bowl of cherries, of course, but it was fairly easy to shift inside the communities to find more comfortable positions, if that makes sense. It’s sort of like a garden- plants get shifted to have more room or more sun or more water as they need it. Life is the same.

However, a few months after I turned 12 years old, I entered a community that I *couldn’t* adapt to. That community was the one of my high school.

After a few of my cousins had some trouble at the local school, my mom decided she did not want to send me there. So my parents chose a local private school for me. I have to admit- before I started there, I was *really* excited. I had never seen anything like it in my life.

The school was situated on a huge campus complete with dorms (local kids attended as day students, and kids from other cities, states, and countries were able to board at the school), numerous buildings specifically for academics, athletic and recreational facilities, etc. The faculty and staff lived in tiny cottages circling the entire campus. The school offered a full schedule of academics, on and off-activities, and sports- anything a kid could ever dream about doing or exploring or trying, it was on that campus.

The campus was gorgeous, full of trees, gardens, winding paths, and dappled sunlight dancing across the stately 100-year old New England-style buildings, all of them with beautifully aged brick facades, ivy climbing over them in every direction. There was a giant art studio, a performing arts center, an indoor pool, a giant dining hall that served homemade family-style meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even a little candy shop.

The academic program was rigorous and strenuous, but a diploma from this place guaranteed college admissions. To my family, who had never had the opportunity to go to college, this was really what mattered.

It sounds pretty amazing, right? I thought it was, until I actually started going there.

The issue was that school had an extremely rigid philosophy about students’ attitudes, behaviors, and opinions. My parents were SUPER-strict (I’m talking only-child-with-health-problems overprotection here, people), but the rules of the school and community went beyond anything I had experienced at home. And as students we were expected to demonstrate our absolute compliance to these rules and philosophies in every aspect of our life on that campus, whether we agreed with them or not. Not only were we expected to be “excellent” in our interactions with faculty and staff, but also each other. And that “excellence” included a fair bit of intolerance.

It was not a nurturing place. And I could never make sense of it. How could a community this beautiful, with so much to offer, be the home of such ugly thinking?

As someone who was creative and very curious, I felt a little crushed. There was no space for growth, no room for questions, no place for thoughtful exchanges. When I first started going there, I wanted to know more about the philosophy of the school, where it came from, why it was important, and why I should believe in it. My family did not share the same philosophy, nor did any of the kids I grew up with, so it was all very new to me. I just wanted to understand. But my questions were not really welcome- I was just expected to do as I was told.

I spent four years sort searching and searching for my place on that campus, in that community. It had to be there, right? There *had* to be a place where I could slip in, a place in that community where I belonged and things made sense and I could begin to grow as a person.

I began to wonder- was it me who was “broken”, who was “ugly” inside? Was it my philosophy, my approach to life? It didn’t feel like it, but something was broken and I spent four years trying to fix that broken-ness, even though I had no idea what it was I was fixing. It was almost a feeling of desperation, in a way.

I did well academically, and managed to get into a great college, so I am truly grateful for that. But in my four years in that community, I completely lost all sense of who I was in my desperate search to find my place in that community. It was exhausting and demeaning.

As you can imagine, as soon as I graduated, I drove off campus, and never looked back. When I got to college, it was like I was 13 again. I picked up where I left off the day I started high school. I found myself again, and I found my place in this new community- my college campus.

The only positive thing I had to say to anyone about my experience within that particular community was that it was over. I had no desire to visit campus, attend reunions, or even communicate with any of my friends from those days, save the few I thought were kindred spirits. And I have kept it that way for almost twenty years. I have kept myself at what I felt was a “safe distance” from that community. Something happened there that felt very dangerous to me, and I didn’t want to get anywhere near it again.

Last week someone added me to a Facebook group for alumni of this school. My immediate reaction was, “No, thank you!” I went to the page to remove myself, I saw something posted that changed EVERYTHING.

In between the fluffy and innocuous exchanges was a thoughtful, sensitive, and honest post from a woman who graduated a year before me. She expressed her sadness at the level of intolerance on campus, but then ended her post by saying she was glad those who had a difficult time at the school had gone on to do well and lead happy lives, despite what went on within that community.

Within hours, the post had over 200 replies from alumni of all years and walks of life, expressing the same frustration and sadness. I finally found the courage to chime in, as well. Connections were made, stories were shared. Wounds have started to heal.

It’s unfortunate we couldn’t find one another while we were all in that community, but I think we all appreciate the *new* community that is sort of blossoming from our shared experiences at that school.

And as the week progressed, and I thought more and more about my four years at that school, in that community, I realized something:

I wasn’t *supposed* to thrive within that community. In fact, it would have been absolutely impossible for me to thrive within that community. Unless I was a completely different person with a completely different set of experiences and values, I would not have found happiness at that school. It wasn’t me that was broken, it was the environment.

The reason I was sent to that school was so that I could learn a lot of useful stuff (of the non-philosophical variety), and get myself into a good college. And I did that.

All of this has been powerful for me, not just because I’m finally coming to peace with my experience within that particular community, but realizing this basic fact of human life: there are communities in which we absolutely cannot, and will not, thrive within. And we will all find ourselves within one of those communities at one point or another.

We will all will be put into situations that will NOT work for us, find ourselves in situations that will NOT make us comfortable, feel trapped within situations that will NOT be a match for our personal values and ethics.

And in that moment, in that situation, our focus needs to be about getting through. Instead of searching for what is
irreparably broken, it’s better to focus our energy on taking each moment as it comes, keeping our noses clean, and moving forward. Finding a small goal and working towards that. Congratulating ourselves for each day that passes, each small success. No, it may not be thriving, but getting by IS something to celebrate. There are small victories along the way.

If you’re in one of these communities, or have spent a period of time in one and are struggling with that, take heart. Know you are doing the very best you can. Know that your inability to thrive is not your fault, not some flaw in your character or some inability to “go with the flow”- it is just a disconnect. It happens in life to all of us.

Take good care of yourself, and show yourself the love and compassion you need, that you deserve, that maybe the community isn’t showing you. Figure out what you need from that environment, and create it for yourself, in the best way possible.

When you are in a community that doesn’t allow you to thrive, find your bliss, in tiny ways, in tiny moments, and move forward the very best you can.