Tuesday, August 5, 2025

There’s a moment, not marked on any calendar, when a place shifts from somewhere you’re in to somewhere you’re of. It doesn’t come with balloons or a banner. Most of the time, you don’t even notice it until after it’s already happened.

You just look up one day and realize:
Your co-worker’s last name that you used to have to effort through pronouncing just rolls smoothly off your tongue.
You flick on the correct light switch in a series without even thinking.
You know the shortcut that saves two stoplights, but only if you turn just before the car wash.

Belonging isn’t loud.
It’s not something you declare.
It’s something that settles into your bones slowly, through repetition, participation, and (ironically) a kind of earned invisibility.

You stop introducing yourself so much.
You stop needing to prove anything.
You get asked to bring the potato salad because your potato salad is the one people now expect.

You’ve stayed long enough to see the second act of things—when the new coffee shop replaces the one that closed, or when the neighbor who used to have the loud teenagers suddenly has a quiet driveway. You’ve seen the changing cast of characters, and you’ve stayed through enough of them that you become one of the fixtures.

And that’s the thing about belonging:
It isn’t just about being known.
It’s about knowing in return.

Knowing the rhythm of things.
Knowing what someone means, even when they don’t say it quite right.
Knowing when to ask—and when to just show up with soup.

I used to think belonging was about being welcomed. And sometimes it is.
But more often, it’s about the long, patient work of staying.

Of choosing to stay long enough to understand the place.
Long enough to be trusted.
Long enough to have changed it, just a little…and to have let it change you too.

If that sounds romantic, I don’t mean it to.
Belonging is work.
It’s weathering the meetings that run far too long, the awkward social overlaps, the seasons where everything feels stagnant or unfamiliar or just off.

But if you can stay long enough, and listen closely enough, and soften without disappearing, belonging eventually arrives. Not with a bang, but a nod. A text. A plate. A seat that nobody questions when you take it.

You belong when people stop explaining the inside jokes.
You belong when your absence is noticed, and your return is easy.
You belong when you can look around and say, “Of course it isn’t perfect. But it’s mine.”

Until Next Time,

Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC