How to know that you belong even when you feel like you dont

[Music]

i

am born out of conflict

what i mean to say is that there is

nothing in me

or around me that is simple

or solved or easy

and in the 21 years of my life i have

become

the perfect puzzle solver

i am organized anxious

and i have this irrational urge to

figure everything out

sometimes way before it needs to be

figured out

until recently the conflict in me was

like the last

burning torch i had while i was running

away from the basement of my ideals

turns out it was the only light i needed

to find my way

life has really confused me it has made

me fail

and fall it has made me believe

that i’m in a race with everybody i have

fought so

hard to not become

life has left me eat myself whole

bras never let me look back at who i was

life has made me act against myself

do a disservice to myself in fact

i have betrayed myself so many times i

can write a book about it

and i will in that book

i will realize that this world is mine

and nobody else is going to be able to

experience it

no matter how hard i try so i’ve decided

to not solve anybody else’s puzzles

anymore

and even though my own world is not

simple

or solved or easy i know

that there is nothing in my life that is

not

worth it hi

my name is forum and the piece you just

heard is a little preamble to what my

talk is going to be about

almost four years ago i co-founded an

art collective called spill poetry

and ever since then my entire life has

revolved around it

but before i go too far to further let

me go a little bit back and tell you how

all of this started

back in 2016 the poetry community in

mumbai was unfortunately only designed

for those who could regularly afford to

pay to perform

so basically an artist had to work hard

creating their art but also pay someone

to show it to the world my co-founder

didn’t think this was right

so we started our journey there we

started with one open mic

which is funded by our pocket monies and

one simple motive in mind which was to

make art completely

free of course for the artist

we want to make a place for people

people who really feel like they

belonged

and as two young artists who founded a

monthly open mic

we put a lot of thought into how this

would turn out

all we knew is that we believed in the

art and the artists that we wanted to

make sure

that artists don’t grow out of privilege

but because of talent and hard work that

they put in

within the year 2017 we grew and how

we started a youtube channel we toured

all across the country

we poured our hearts out to little

complete strangers and most important of

all

we bought so many unique people on our

journey with us

having co-founded split 17 i have had

the luck

to meet and grow with some of the best

people and artists from around the

country

and in that process i realized that as a

human how important it is for us to

belong

let me give you a simple example

margaret med who was an anthropologist

was asked by the student many years ago

what she thought was the first sign of

civilization

now the student expected to talk about

things like

clay pots or religious artifacts or

tools for hunting but

instead met talked about a 15 000 year

fractured femur

that had healed this might not seem like

much to us right now

but in those days occupations were

hunting and gathering and if someone was

injured the rest would most likely have

to abandon them

without modern medicine a fractured

femur could take six weeks to heal

and if at that time a fractured femur

had healed

it meant that the person with the injury

had people around them

people who took care of them who tended

to their injury fed and defended them

until it healed

one male fractured femur was complete

evidence

that someone somewhere had belonged to a

community that helped them survive

even when they couldn’t on their own

communities always give a sense of

direction

and while my co-founder when i built a

community of lakhs of people

i personally made a lot of changes to my

life

i was studying in pune the year we

started spill i had to

constantly move back and forth and back

and forth from meetings or shoots or

events and as a person who doesn’t like

travelling at

all it became really hectic for me

so i took a decision to leave a college

i had worked so hard to get into

and come back to bombay

once i came back to bombay i also tried

to schedule my days in a way that i

could give

maximum time and effort to building

still as a brand and a community

but in all of this i got so busy making

an organization that was home to

thousands of people that i completely

forgot what it felt like to belong

suddenly building this community came

with the extra cost of forgetting my own

needs

i think this tends to happen to us if we

stay in one place for too long

for me personally that dissident started

about a year ago and it

hardly ever stopped the entire time i

was worried there had been two careless

if i had let life throw things with me

and accept them without question

or walked in the path that life had

created without paving my own

i was so confused had i actually

let life dictate how i lived my presence

without ever having a chance to explore

any

other option my mind was riddled with a

puzzle

that was bigger and tougher than i’d

ever seen in my life

i felt like i was succumbing to the

rationality that

i should stay in a place only because i

have reached there in the first place

i felt like this community i was

creating have become bigger than me

more important than me and then i just

would not

belong there anymore

after so many months of feeling desolate

with my own art a friend helped put

things into perspective

it happened last december i was in delhi

for an event

and i spent the past weekend surrounded

by some beautiful art and even better

artists than usually that would make me

a really really happy person

but it wasn’t the case this time as i

was heading to the airport i felt this

certain uneasiness in me

and i had to get it out so i figured i’d

call one of my closest friends and i

knew he’d bring me back to my senses

so i called him up i told him listen

i don’t think this poetry is working out

for me

i think i should try something new i

don’t feel like i belong here maybe i

should just start distancing myself

and i was saying all this because i was

so afraid of being pushed out of a place

i had called home for the past four

years

within two minutes of me ranting in this

conversation

you shut me up and say forum no

the thing is you’ve been giving and

giving for

way too long without ever thinking about

what exactly you’re giving away

he said what if the things you’re giving

away are

exactly the things that you need

he continued to see that this wasn’t

even about being an artist anymore

he said you have lost your happiness and

the only natural reaction to that is to

try and find it again

and if in the process you have to

rediscover your agency then that’s okay

but make sure you keep it with yourself

once you find it

and i started thinking what was so

important about my

agency so the thing is

in whatever we do all of us have

something or the other at stake

now the stake can be our talent our

personality and maybe in my case it was

a time and effort they had put in

but this stake is our agency

it is what defines us and relates to us

in that space

so what was my agency

was it about poetry was about the time

and effort

was it about being an artist was it

about running this art collective

and it was accumulation of all these

things

it was a simple act of realizing that my

life

was going to be so much more than the

cluster of experiences i had accumulated

and that was it belongingness had become

about

taking my agency back

and i’m not just telling my story here

most of us have felt left out in some

situation or the other

it’s so important to understand where

that there are times where only

we can resolve this conflict we forget

that we’re giving away

our agency so easily to people and

things that have got nothing to do with

our satisfaction

let’s look at it this way the longer you

don’t

believe in yourself the more time it

takes for you to start to

and if you have lost your agency you

have to get

back as fast as you can

ever since the day at the airport i have

been working towards figuring out

where exactly i belonged and i know it

sounds like some technical

self-actualization level stuff and

sometimes it was

i had to make really hard decisions

about my future and my career

and some of those included breaking the

notions i had about how

my life would turn out well in the past

few months i’ve also realized something

that has given me the mental karma i had

been craving for so long

i was not failing or

falling for that matter i was just

growing the past four years have given

me only one kind of experience

in one area one field with only a

certain kind of people

and somehow that automatically led me to

believe that i

couldn’t succeed anywhere else

but now my mind is finally began

exploring his capabilities

and its interests because it was not

happy being where it was

i was moving out of my comfort zone step

by step

i gave my spoken word career a bit of

rest and started studying things like

screenwriting and design

some things i was really good at and

some things were really

not meant for me at all but at least i

gave myself the opportunity to

let myself see what exactly the world

had in store for me

my mind had been begging for more

it was my responsibility to satisfy that

craving

and honestly i feel it is every person’s

responsibility to themselves

to let your mind be free and let it roam

wherever it wants trusting it enough

that it will surely reach a place that

is best for you

feeling like you don’t belong in one

place doesn’t mean that you don’t belong

at all

life is not a man on a stranded island

belongingness is not about

what you have done or what you will do

but about where your satisfaction leads

you

because you see to get somewhere you

have to make your sacrifices come for

something

you have to know that to pick up

something you might have to put down

something old

even if it’s for a little while i had

been wondering

all this time if i wasn’t meant to be a

poet

but what if i wasn’t meant to be just a

poet

nobody is just one thing yes sure i was

a poet

but i could be so many other things like

a painter

who was told by her 9th grade art

teacher that she didn’t paint well

enough

or a dancer who only danced for herself

or

a girl who constantly gave up hobbies

just to pick up new ones

and that would be okay because i

am in my own world no matter the rise

and fall of belief i have in myself

i have convinced myself that i

am going to be so much more than what i

have done or what i will do

and now i finally know

that i belong even on the days i feel

like i don’t

[Music]

you