Quotes About Community

Connection, along with love and belonging (two expressions of connection), is why we are here, and it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.

Because we can feel belonging only if we have the courage to share our most authentic selves with people, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

I've lived my entire life on the outside.

Me too" says I may not have had the exact same experience as you, but I know this struggle, and you are not alone. Sympathy says Wow, that's bad, I feel so sorry for you. I don't know or understand what your experience is like, but I'll grant you that it looks pretty bad and I don't want to know.

Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. In the realm of the political,among the religious, in our families, and in our romantic lives, we see little indication that love informs decisions, strengthens our understanding of community, or keeps us together. This bleak picture in no way alters the nature of our longing. We still hope that love will prevail. We still believe in love's promise.

we don't derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.

Social interaction makes us live longer, healthier lives. By a lot. Pinker writes, "In fact, neglecting to keep in close contact with people who are important to you is at least as dangerous to your health as a pack-a-day cigarette habit, hypertension, or obesity.

Look out into that audience again. These are people. Just people.

Shaming and blaming without accountability is toxic to couples, families, organizations, and communities.

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to one another by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power

Belonging is a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. When we sacrifice who we are, we not only feel separate from others, but we even feel disconnected from ourselves.

In our technology-crazed world, we've confused being communicative with feeling connected. Just because we're plugged in, doesn't mean we feel seen and heard. In fact, hyper-communication can mean we spend more time on Facebook than we do face-to-face with the people we care about.

From gangs to gossiping, we'll do what it takes to fit in if we believe it will meet our need for belonging. But it doesn't. We can only belong when we offer our most authentic selves and when we're embraced for who we are.

Most of us are good at giving help, but when it comes to vulnerability, we need to ask for help too.

Every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a little better and the world a little braver.

Too many lonely and secret lives.

as members of a social species, we don't derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.

One of the most surprising things that unfolded in my research is the pairing of certain terms. I can't separate the concepts of love and belonging because when people spoke of one, they always talked about the other.

as the poet June Jordan wrote, "We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Love and belonging are essential to the human experience. As I conducted my interviews, I realized that only one thing separated the research participants who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness. It's as simple and complicated as this: If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.

The bottom line is that we need each other. And not just the civilized, proper, convenient kind of need. Not one of us gets through this life without expressing desperate, messy, and uncivilized need. The kind we are reminded of when we come face-to-face with someone who is in a deep struggle.

we feel the most alive when we're connecting with others

Love and belonging will always be uncertain.

Love belongs with belonging.