Belonging and Misfit

Towards the end of last year, as I reflected on my journey, two concepts began circulating in my mind: belonging and misfit. It occurs to me that these feelings happened at different moments in my journey. Misfit was going to Lagos as a child who was leaving the north for the second time and was dropped into a culture that made me feel “strange.” When we went to Lagos, we called my Dad “Baami,” but one sister said as, “Omo Ile Hausa,” we were local (unrefined), and we needed to say “Daddy.” So, in Lagos, I struggled with belonging. Lagos children talk to you from their window because they are individualistic and primarily locked in by their parents; as a born and bred northern girl, I was communal.

More so, I was not the oldest when we lived in the north; hence, there was room for Yawo. Yawo is what the southwest will call irin-Iranu, which Fela called perambulator. Yawo, which you can call aimless meandering, was a cultural pastime for the northerners where I was born and raised.

When we returned to Kaduna after a brief hiatus of 2-3 years in Lagos, where I thought I belonged, I suddenly became a misfit. Going to Lagos for people in the north in the 1990s was like going abroad because Lagos was the wild place many watched on TV and read in the Newspapers. While in Lagos, we have been forced to learn “Lagos Yoruba” ( a supposedly refined Yoruba) in replacement of our “fa Ilorin Yoruba,” which we learned from children who came to live with people we knew. So, we said things like Mi de gba. mi de this, mi de that.

Added to these, when we returned, I returned as the oldest person in our family, and it meant responsibility. I became ostracized by people I played with who suddenly believed I was “arrogant” because I went to Lagos. In addition, I skipped two classes because Lagos School said I was too bright to be in a class, so they gave me what they called a double promotion at the time. When I returned to KD, I continued two classes ahead of my peers, adding to their anger. Back in KD, I felt out of place.

Years ago, Pop taught about Moses and how he dealt with belonging and misfits. To the Egyptians, he was a Hebrew who had Egyptian privileges because he was adopted by the pharaoh’s daughter, and to the Hebrews, he was not accepted because they believed he lived in the palace and did not know what it meant to be an oppressed Hebrew. On both sides, he did not belong, Pop argued.

I felt this misfit and belonging when I came to grad school in America. Am I a PhD older, or am I a graduate student? I knew I was both, but these dualities like Moses, who felt like he had to be Hebrew and yet Egyptian, was something I could relate to. Moving between places where he navigated both feelings of misfit and belonging.

When I started to step out more often from one of my former jobs, I had to deal with this again. At work, people thought she was now a member of this organization. At this organization, people have their own views, too. For some, I was a PhD holder from this supposed Nigerian Ivy League school who must be proud, and earning my 32-year-old meant not knowing what it meant to be a PhD.

Personally, I realized that I may have to deal with this feeling of belonging and misfit until God brings me to an inflection point( check out my PoP sermon “Inflection Point” on YouTube, if you will). Pop said that this feeling is the human experience. You always feel you belong in your history because you feel familiar with it. You feel a belonging to it because you know it. Destiny feels strange because of its uncertainty. You initially feel out of place in it. It takes a while to settle into it.

When I wrote a post about “going to bed with strangers” some months ago, this was what I was after. How do we get comfortable in rooms where we feel like misfits and in unfamiliar places.? If my mother was like my father, who despises discomfort for his children, I would have told her I wanted to return to being in the same class with my peers because I felt like a misfit in my present class. My dad never wanted anything to inconvenience our childhood because he believed that we should have a normal childhood and not be robbed of innocence and the joy of it. Most of the people in my class at the time were my sister-mum’s classmates before we left for Lagos. But my mother may have put me on a three-day fast to deal with the spirit of backwardness. I leaned into the discomfort of being a misfit because I was learning that history should not keep me from my destiny and that I belong.

I am learning that if God allows my work, plan, and strategy to align with God's destiny, I will be in rooms that are not common to people of my race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and other demographics. I am learning to accept my "new normal" and make myself feel at home in places where I feel like a misfit. I have to become less sensitive to the room’s temperature in ways that increase my discomfort but make me feel at home.

From the Judeo-Christian text, we learn of two people confronted with similar realities. One decides to embrace the uncertainty of being a misfit, which comes with unhinging yourself from your history while you aim for your destiny. At the same time, the other chooses the comfort of familiarity to stay where they think they belong. These two, as you know, are Opah and Ruth. Opah felt okay about where she belonged, but Ruth embraced the emotion of being a temporary misfit in a place where she would soon belong.

Two more years to my fortieth birthday. If I have anything to say to you, it is that you belong!

You belong in rooms where you dream and envision yourself.

You belong to the top of fields, disciplines, and industries where you imagine.

You belong in that vision and place of financial, mental, and emotional abundance.

You belong in rooms that have yet to be imagined or created.

You belong on and beyond that salary scale

You belong where you think you belong

You belong in a relationship and family that nurtures and nourishes

You belong with people who see you as a complement and not a competitor

You belong where the eagles soar and glide their wings

You will feel like a misfit at first, but then later, as you do the work, you will realize it is where you belong all the while.

As these new rooms become familiar, you can reinvent and reimagine yourself in a new room where you feel like a misfit and then belong. That, my friend, is the circle of life.

Importantly, I am learning to soothe my inner child as I lean into the discomfort of misfits and talk to myself as I would a friend in crisis and chaos. I call myself as my father would and soothe myself. More importantly, I am learning the art of self-compassion; nobody comes to the world having already figured it out. We learn through the errors and mistakes.

Finally, I am mastering the art of self-affirmation in the rooms where I belong, reminding myself to rest in the blessing because I prayed for this, worked and labored, and paid the price.

Posted on Facebook on  August 25, 2024