We Don’t Belong Here
"Which fork do I use? ….how do you hold a fork anyway?"
My team and I had a two day safari at a resort a couple hours out of Cape Town on Thursday and Friday and we quickly discovered we didn't fit in very well.
We didn't know how to eat a fancy dinner anymore. Which fork goes with what again? How do you even eat at a table? We've been sitting on the kitchen floor eating toast for the last three months. We don't even have chairs much less a table in our little house.
It was awkward and funny and a little bit nerve-wracking. How exactly are we supposed to go back to normal society if we can't hold a conversation with a stranger without saying something weird or stand up from our seat without knocking the table over. We sat in our luxury cabin more than a little flabbergasted that there were six pillows on the first bed and that there was a tub in the bathroom.
We all murmured at some point,
"I just don't belong here."
And then it clicked. We were sitting in our cabin and Elliot said,
"We don't feel comfortable in a materialistic society anymore."
We are just as happy sleeping on cheap mattress on bunk beds. We are just as happy with our sleeping bags. We don't feel comfortable with fifty pieces of silverware for one meal because, let's be honest, technically silverware isn't completely necessary. But for goodness sake if you need to use it just use one fork and knife. Recycle people.
It makes me a little uncomfortable here. I feel out of place. I lived in Grassy Park, aka the ghetto, for the last three months. I lived in an almost bare apartment in Bangkok, I lived in a crowded room filled with bunk beds in Phuket, I lived in my tent in Honduras. I don't know how to be this person anymore. I don't know how to belong here.
And it is nice to have a lot of pillows and blankets. And the food is good. And the people look clean-cut and put together. And I can appreciate this place as a huge blessing. But I don't think that I ever want to belong here again.
I'm ok with feeling a little bit awkward. As long as it means that I never forget what it feels like to live with not a lot but more than enough, I am perfectly comfortable being uncomfortable.
Because I just don't belong here anymore.
And finally I can say,
I am not comfortable in this world any longer. Truly, I was made for another world.
