Either you’re with us or you’re against us. We’ve all heard these words before. They’re words that force us to make a choice, to pick sides. There’s no middle ground in these words. You’re either friend or foe. And once the choice is made, you take comfort in a certain sense of belonging. You’ve become a member of a tribe. You have people who will defend you, who will have your back. But at what cost? While you feel the safety and reassurance that your beliefs or way of life is shared by your people, your people might also tell you that those on the other side are the villains, wrong in their beliefs or worse, inherently bad. Picking sides is not hard, and you’ll rest easy feeling that your opinions have validity and strength and merit, but the choice to pick sides is almost always a false one, because in life, black and white rarely exist and in your heart and mind, you cannot be defined completely by the views of the side you’ve chosen. You’re nuanced and unique. We all are. The choice to join a tribe is easy. The courage to choose yourself, the will to discover your own unique shade of gray, and the bravery to not only live your beliefs but to sing them into the world is hard. Brené Brown calls this courage and will and bravery “The Wilderness” and it forms the thesis of her beautiful and timely book, Braving the Wilderness.
Like the last time I came to Guanajuato, I arrived here a month ago armed with a pile of books. Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen and Mia Birdsong’s How We Show Up. Nonfiction, all of them. And all of them real, physical, paper books. Ones that allow me to step away from the screen, dog-ear the pages, and highlight important passages and make notes in the margins. I still haven’t transitioned to the world of ebooks, a life change I realize benefits the traveler but one I’m unsure I’ll ever make. The first choice among this mix of “purpose-finding” books was Brown’s Braving the Wilderness, the subtitle of which is, “The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone.” I actually purchased this book in error, intending to buy another of Brown’s books, Daring Greatly, but somehow I got flummoxed on Amazon and purchased Braving instead. Loving all of Brown’s work, including her podcast, Unlocking Us, I figured I’d read all of her books eventually so it hardly mattered that I’d purchased one I hadn’t initially set out to buy.
This ‘wrong’ purchase, and the fact that I’d chosen Braving first from the handful of books I’d packed, proved fortuitous. Just as Sue Monk Kidd’s When the Heart Waits came into my life at a perfect time of personal waiting 10 months ago, Brown’s Braving the Wilderness entered my awareness at another particularly noteworthy moment. This time the moment wasn’t my own. This time the emotions I was feeling and the grief I was experiencing were collective. Not shared by everyone, but shared by roughly half of America. This time the moment was the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, and Brown’s words of belonging, bridging divides, and opting for true connection rather than “us versus them” thinking proved particularly timely.
Brown wrote Braving the Wilderness in 2017, coincidentally coming off the heels of Donald Trump’s first victory. The message of the book is mostly one of belonging and summoning the courage to stand alone, even when social or family tides are pushing you to choose a side or agree on a shared opinion. Brown begins by quoting Maya Angelou. “You are only free when you realize you belong no place–you belong every place–no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.” Brown, admittedly perplexed when first hearing Angelou’s call for us to belong “no place,” lays out the meaning she eventually discovered in these words. It’s not until we’re fully true to ourselves and willing to stand alone in our beliefs – in the metaphorical wilderness – that we can truly belong with others.
You are only free when you realize you belong no place–you belong every place–no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great
Maya Angelou
Politics in America, in nearly all cases, is the antithesis of the wilderness. Like rooting for the Yankees over the Dodgers or Ohio State over Michigan, there are often no gray areas when it comes to party politics. Very few of us have the courage to stand alone. Most of us choose sides, dig in, and rally alongside our tribemates. Entering the wilderness, the area between the Democrats and Republicans is nearly impossible, and good luck to you when you tell your left-leaning friends that you believe in the Democratic platform but that your faith guides you to stand in opposition to abortion in most cases. The U.S. Presidential race, and the inevitable election, is a two-horse race, a ball game, an “us versus them,” pick your side, fight to the finish. And in the era of Trump, this has only become more and more pronounced as the MAGA crowd seemingly finds no fault in their fearless leader while most Democrats believe Trump to be evil incarnate.
I don’t disguise my allegiance to the Democratic party and the disappointment in my country’s return to Trump. As I wrote in an earlier post, I think character matters, and choosing a man to lead our country who swims in a sea of compassionless hate, bigotry, abuse, and divisiveness marks, I believe, a profoundly sad moment in our history. The election results were very hard to take. My immediate emotions were grief, but also anger. How could that many people, including those I know and love, possibly vote for that man? I’m still coming to terms with everything, with another Trump term and the fact that over 75 million Americans presumably view the world so radically different than me. In the days following the election my thoughts ranged from a desire to give up and denounce politics altogether to an urge to confront anyone and everyone who voted for Trump, or worse, who chose not to vote at all. I also desperately felt the need to “belong.” I was so confused and stunned and heart-broken by the results that my deepest instinct, my most basic need, was to go to my corner and be among my people. The wilderness was nowhere in sight. I needed my tribe. I needed to hear, over and over and over again, that I was right, and the other side was wrong. I needed to get the validation that what had happened was a tragedy and to feel that I wasn’t alone. That our side held the high ground. Our view of things was sound and true. That we were on the side of good and they were on the side of evil.
But those feelings passed (mostly). My sadness for our country’s choice of Donald Trump was replaced by a larger sadness – the fact that a huge divide exists in our nation and that we seem desperately inadequate at, and perhaps even disinterested in, doing anything about it. This is the basis for a big old stinking garbage pile of sadness. Is there hope? Maybe. On my good days I choose to believe so. And perhaps a good place to start is with Brown’s concept of the wilderness, and by acknowledging our innate desire to belong, a desire that makes choosing sides far easier, and unfortunately often far more satisfying in the short-term, than standing alone.
Is the political divide in our country, our extreme partisanship and our failure to be able to talk civilly about the issues due to our human desire to belong? In large part, I’d say, “yes.” Of course it’s more complicated than that. Our politics are shaped by our environment, our families, our upbringing, our race, gender, sexual orientation and a whole host of other things. And the divide is made larger by super PACs, cable news, large corporations, corrupt politicians, and billionaires whose fortunes and success thrive on us choosing sides and digging in. But when it comes to talking politics, actually engaging with someone whose beliefs are different from ours, we’re much, much better at parroting the shallow, imprecise talking points of our side than we are at meeting someone in the wilderness with vulnerability, openness and a desire to learn.
Braving the Wilderness is not solely about the political divide. It’s much more than that. Brown’s book is about self-trust, trusting others, fear, being brave, her own lived obstacles to true belonging, and the profound loneliness so many of us feel today. But in our current backdrop, it’s quite difficult to read Braving and not view it through the lens of our post 2024 election world. Through her research, Brown identifies four elements of connection, true belonging and “finding our way back to one another” even within an “increasingly divisive and cynical world.” This isn’t about belonging in the easy, tribal way. It’s about belonging in a way that first requires us to belong to ourselves and then, with honesty and vulnerability, to be able to truly belong with others.
- People are hard to hate close up. Move in.
- Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil.
- Hold hands. With strangers.
- Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.
One, for true belonging to exist, and for the partisan divide to shrink, we must resist the impulse to categorize all voters of one party as identical clones, defined by extreme messages we read on Twitter, videos we watch online or sheep-like rally-goers we see on cable news. Whenever possible, we must move in and see the individual. Two, we must stay curious, ask questions and recognize our penchant for bullshitting when talking about things we don’t really understand. We must seek out the truth, rather than seeking victory through bullshit, and we must care for others and their beliefs without degrading them. Three, just as in times of crisis, war, terrorist attacks or natural disasters, when coming together feels natural and right, we must come together, as well, for collective moments of joy. Concerts, sporting events, weddings, festivals… all events that bring members of different tribes together and all ways to build and increase connection with those with whom we disagree. And four, we must discover and stay true to our own personal ideals while still allowing for the vulnerability of a soft front, with a loving, wild heart as our guide.
Brown states clearly that practicing these four elements is challenging. I’ll admit that while thinking about them and while writing this essay, there remains a large part of me that would rather just give up, or give in, and return to my tribe. I’ll also admit that if, in four years, we’re faced with another candidate in the image of Trump, my desire will be for a crushing Democratic victory rather than a moment of hand-holding with Republicans. I’d like to think I’ve found the high road and will continue to walk it throughout my life, but that would be a lie. My tribal instincts still exist, and it’s likely impossible that anyone could convince me Trump and his ideology will be good for our country.
There exists another huge point about politics in America I think is obvious but worth making. Both sides aren’t the same. No two sides ever are. For the divide to shrink, for our tribes to meet in a place of courage, respect, and caring, both sides must come to the table playing by the same rules. Both must act in good faith. Both must practice civility. If those on one side are interested in bravely entering the wilderness to discover a true sense of belonging and those on the other are interested only in winning, connection will never happen. One side cannot be the side of “moving in” and “holding hands” while the other is the side of victory at all costs. Nothing will change, but for those on the side of soft fronts to continually be taken advantage of by those with iron fronts and hardened hearts. Both sides must play from the same playbook, sing from the same song sheet. And, perhaps just as important, both sides must recognize and fight tenaciously against the powerful, malicious, capitalistic forces in our world that exist to keep us divided in service of their wealth and egomaniacal interests. We must play by the same rules and practice the same good faith. I argue that Brown’s Braving the Wilderness could be a tremendously effective place to start.
I’ll end with two quotes. One is from James Baldwin, an important voice I wish to discover a great deal more about in the future. I discovered Baldwin’s words in the book I’m currently reading, another book about belonging, this one entitled How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong. The quote by Baldwin is quite relevant to this conversation. “A country is only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it to become.” While Baldwin was speaking about the basic tenets of freedom and civil rights in this 1960 speech, his words remain applicable today, in our 21st century politically-charged America.
The final quote is from Brown herself, and it’s how she ends Braving the Wilderness. While Brown could perhaps be labeled as an idealist, it’s important to remember she’s anything but naive, and the last thing she would ever advocate for is hand-holding for hand-holding’s sake. If we move in simply to bridge the divide but by doing so we lose ourselves, then any belonging we experience is empty belonging. We must belong first to ourselves, or as Angelou writes, “no place at all.” I’ll finish here and let Brown’s parting words speak for themselves.
This is not a call to stop advocating, resisting, or fighting. I will do all three and hope you will too. Our world needs us to show up and stand up for our beliefs. I just hope we’re civil and respectful. When we degrade and diminish our humanity, even in response to being degraded and diminished, we break our own wild hearts.
This is not a call to stop advocating, resisting, or fighting. I will do all three and hope you will too. Our world needs us to show up and stand up for our beliefs. I just hope we’re civil and respectful. When we degrade and diminish our humanity, even in response to being degraded and diminished, we break our own wild hearts.
Dr. Brené Brown