How to Belong

The Power of Understanding for Young People

We are, again, facing wartime. What are you going to tell your children?

What are we going to tell our children one day when they wake up into the reality beyond the small nest we try and shelter them in? What are we going to say? How do we look into their eyes, and see there the crushed hope, the broken heart, the stolen dream?

The greatest gift of love we can give our children is thought leadership.

Letters to Maia (#2):

How to Belong

This is not a book. It is a letter, and it is for you.

A letter is personal.

This is a message, just for you! For the part of you at least, that still dreams. It is a message about believing, that things can be better!

It is about a kind, of special kindness, we can be shown, the kindness, of being explained, the kindness, of Understanding. One of the most wonderful words, is, ‘Because’.

We can become scared, or hurt, and usually it is when we have been surprised, by something we did not expect, or something we did not Understand.

We do not always know the way the world works, and we all have to figure it out as we go along.

There are two kinds of figuring out, the one is where we are explained something by someone who loves us.

The other kind is where we find out for ourselves after making a mistake. Mistakes are very important ways for us to learn things.

The magic word that helps us remember the lesson, is ‘Because’.

It is the word that explains how the unpleasant surprise happened, and how we can try to make sure it does not happen to us again.

‘Because’ is about Understanding.

‘Because’ explains the Reasons about all sorts of things.

The kindness of this message is about Understanding that when we want things to be better, we have to do it ourselves sometimes, even if it is hard.

The best kind of freedom we have is when we are free to dream, together, a dream where the world is better than it is today— a world where everyone feels safe, where everyone understands how precious our world is, and where we care about it and everyone who lives in it. Why would we want, the world to be, better?

Because, even though it is sad to learn, it is true, that not everyone, is safe.

Our world is a little sick.

People are shouting at each other.

Grown-ups shout when they become afraid.

They shout when they think, no one is listening.

And grown-ups, have let things get bad, because, they kept telling themselves that someone else, was coming.

Because they had been told when they were little, that someone else was coming, because their mummies and daddies once told them, and so on and so on and so on.

And so, some of the children who were sad, and lonely, and felt empty inside, and who had never been shown how to love themselves—they thought that having lots of stuff would make them feel better.

If they felt small they thought bossing people would make them feel braver.

They thought this Because, when they were small and someone bossed them, it made them feel even smaller.

And all the bossing, and the collecting, of more and more stuff, made us all run around, busy, trying to also have enough, in case someone came and took it all away.

Because, when you are afraid, and you do not understand how to be safe, you become afraid, of everything.

And when people are afraid all the time, they get, unwell.

Because, worrying all the time, is not a happy way to be in our bodies.

And so, the grown-ups, they all got quite unwell.

But, we are a beautiful people, and at the end of the day, the good ones, most of us, want to be free.

We cannot forgive what they have done; but we can forgive the people that did it, Because, they are people, and, Because, people make mistakes.

And people will make mistakes with us, and we will make mistakes.

Because, because…

Because! —that is what it means to be a person in this world, it means, to not always know, or Understand, or remember, how to show care to ourselves, and to others, and to the world we live in.

Because, we know, in our hearts, that is what we would want.

Our hearts, know things.

And now your mind knows this!

Because!

When you guide a child to genuine self-love, and the understanding that brings, you never have to worry about their friends or their choices.

Maia is our 3-year-old daughter.

I want to make sure she loves herself and that there is a world of love around her, or at least a village, who knows how to love her because they know how to love themselves. That is what all my work is aimed at—lifting others out of the modern confusion, illuminating the possibility of the greatness of our future selves and building a bridge towards a tomorrow we would all prefer to inhabit, in a word: “Legacy”.

This is really what we have made our life purpose. When my daughter looks around at the state of suffering and unkindness in the world and asks what we did, we want to answer with integrity and conviction “Whatever it took!” and fucking mean it.

“I always want to talk to the adult in you that you will one day be, not because I don’t care for the child in you, but that if I really care for the child in you, I want there to be the best adult around to guide and lead you and love you, when I can no longer be around, and that you absolutely know how to be that for yourself, especially when everyone else has forgotten.”

Rocco

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