Finding Your People

Dear One, 

My mother Caron offered a gift to almost everyone she could. Her level of appreciation for beauty of every kind, let me tell you, was astonishing.

And so I was raised by a woman who saw beauty in everything and called it out. We would be walking down the street and her entire face would break out into joy as she saw different people and places and things, and exclaimed “How beautiful you are!”. How often people were surprised by her showed me just how precious this was.

One of the last things that she shared with us before crossing the rainbow bridge is that "mattering matters" and to never miss an opportunity to let someone know that they matter.

And so today that's what I'm doing with you. Whether you feel like you're my people or not, I'm letting you know that you matter. I spent my morning meditation inviting you to be with your people, to look for us, to see us, to be with us, and to let yourself be seen, to know that you matter…

Finding your people 

begins with a decision to be seen, 

to be seen in your messiest places, 

and also to be seen in your gloriousness

to be seen when you're

putting things together 

and also when you're pulling things apart

when you find your people, 

it's like 

breathing 

an air that you knew existed 

but weren't sure you'd ever find. 

It's a discovery that there are people as strange as you are, 

but in completely different ways. 

Finding your people isn't just that you like the same songs, although you might 

or that eat the same foods although you might, 

or that you 

want the same things in life. 

It's less about affinities toward preferences 

and more about a feeling. 

The closest way I could describe it is like a groove. 

It's like that point in the evening in a concert 

where all the popular songs have been worn away 

and you're a little bit tired and wondering if you're gonna head home, 

and all of a sudden it's the song you've been looking for

 and you feel it in your whole body and then everybody's moving. 

It's a feeling. 

Sometimes I feel it less with individual people and more with whole groups of people, like at

That evening concert 

under the Twinkle Lights, 

under the moonlight, when the beat is so blue that you feel joyful 

and so does everybody else. 

It's a wink from an elder with a hat pulled over one eye 

and flip-flops, even though it's cold 

and they wink at you and you know they see you 

and you let them see you. 

It's the child running up to you 

that belongs to the parents who don't know you and they apologize, 

but you have a moment with the child where there's an understanding. 

It's this moment 

as I'm recording this, 

as an unbelievably huge and gorgeous white bird flies over my head 

and reminds me 

this is my people. 

My people aren't just people. 

My people are birds.

My people are tigers I've never met. 

Of course, they're not people, 

but at the same time, when I look at them, 

I see myself in them. 

It's something from the wild. 

It's a remembrance of a time 

before this time 

it's a call to belonging to something bigger than neighborhood and fashion sense, 

and which apps you're a part of in community 

and which things you like from everybody else. 

It's a call to 

a feeling. 

It's a feeling that I don't know if anyone on this planet ever escapes 

because somehow we're always looking for it. 

We think it's a place because we've just been traveling for so long and sometimes you find it in a place 

like when I think about the Bay Area, 

I think I'm a child of the Bay. It's my place and I like visiting other places, 

but as soon as I smell the salty sea of San Francisco and see the golden gates, I know that's my place. 

That doesn't mean everybody there is my people, 

but I see my people there all the time 

and we say hello. As we pass by on the streets, 

we share pleasantries and what I really wanna do is say, 

I see you.

I've missed you. 

I'm sorry about your father, 

your mother. 

I heard about your child, 

your work. 

How's the hip, 

the foot, 

the hand, 

the finances. 

How are you feeling about 

what's been coming out around here, 

about the stories that have been told about us, about you, 

about the evolution of the species 

or not

finding your people

I'd love to say is an easy thing, 

but it isn't always so easy

Sometimes 

at the festivals when the rainbow flags are flying 

and the tie dye is dancing 

and the corn is piping hot 

and the barbecue smells so good 

and you've never been hungrier in your life 

and suddenly everybody's dancing 

and you're like, yeah, my people. 

Sometimes in church 

when the soloist is riffing 

in a way 

that nobody expected and everybody's in an 

ecstatic cascade of delight 

and you're like, yeah, 

that feeling, 

that's a feeling of belonging to a people, but also to a song 

and a place 

and a space. 

I remember that feeling from the first time 

I went to Glide church 

and the choir started coming down the aisle and their tie-dye robes singing, 

“Celebrate good times - Come on. There's a party going on right here, a celebration…”

and I started crying. 

My people

Looking for your people 

is a favorite pastime 

of our species at this time 

because you're looking for someone 

who sees you and has the capacity to see you,

 and that's one of the issues with finding your people 

is you need people with similar capacities. 

Again, you might not like the same thing 

or dress the same way 

or have the same affinities, 

but there's a similar capacity 

and that's where the challenge is 

because capacity 

is rare. I'd like to think it isn't, 

but I actually think it is. 

I can only truly be seen 

by people who have a similar capacity 

as I do for seeing them.

I can see lots of people who don't see me, 

but when someone really sees me, they're stretching into a capacity, 

for who I am, what I'm creating, what I'm all about. 

There's appreciation, 

there's inquiry, 

and I have the exact same thing about them. 

It isn’t about accomplishments or what's visible. 

It's about a feeling again.

but not having the capacity to see and be seen is lonely 

and people feel isolated even in a crowd 

or in a community.

There's something that we do in our community that I absolutely love 

and maybe it's not something we do. 

It's more like who we be 

the symbol for it is the red thread, 

but the energy for it is an energy of belonging 

and it's an interesting capacity that we have developed over these past 30 years where 

when someone walks into a virtual space or a physical space 

without needing to prove themselves in any way or even say their name, 

we embrace them in a feeling of belonging. 

It's something we've cultivated and the interesting thing is that 

if at least one person is brave enough 

to cultivate a capacity for having people feel like they're seen and they belong, 

then that person so often surprised 

someone new feels included 

and relaxes into the space, 

and that relaxing allows them to be seen in a different way 

and perhaps they recognize they're with other beings 

who have a capacity for cultivating belonging without even needing to know you.

I think the “needing to prove yourself” stuff really keeps us from seeing each other.

I think people are just enough as they are showing up 

bravely into a new space.

Finding your people 

isn't easy and sometimes you find them 

and then they're gone again 

and you feel like you have to start over, 

but you don't want to because you spent so long finding those specific ones 

and then they scatter 

into the four directions. 

You find yourself 

looking eye to eye with a hummingbird and wondering, 

are you my people? 

Yes. Hummingbird is also 

my people.

Hummingbirds because of how I dress,

think I'm a flower. 

The number of times I hear the worrying of their wings 

before I even see their little ruby faces is a lot. 

It's enough that I've come to know that 

I'm part of their people too. 

Of course, I'm not really talking about people 

or birds 

or tigers.

I'm talking about a feeling, 

this feeling of seeing 

and being seen is something 

~ Shiloh Sophia