You're in the club.

Longing for belonging.

I started The Enthusiast because I need reminders. In all the toomuchery of life, I forget sometimes that life can be — and actually is — good. It’s easy for me to lose sight of the very things that excite me most.

Here’s what I’m excited about today:

“The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.” - Wendell Berry

You’re in. You made it. You’re part of the team. You have a seat at the table. You absolutely, unequivocally, no doubt about it, fully, completely, not making this up, cross my heart, no take backsies — you …. you belong.

What if every kid in the world could feel that? What if every home and classroom and playground were full of kids who knew this? And grownups!? What if they knew? What if they felt it? Wouldn’t it be amazing if somehow every person, young and old, knew the warmth of a true bonfire of belonging?

This idea excites me.

It’s why I write books. It’s why I create little clubs around my books. (If you pre-order my new picture book, you get a little pin badge and membership card as an agent for the Fantastic Bureau of Imagination.) It took a friend pointing it out to me recently for me to realize . . . I just keep creating scrappy handmade clubs.

A few examples:

1. COOL CLUB (started in elementary school, quickly disbanded) 2. THE WONDER SOCIETY 3. NOT SO SECRET WRITING FRIENDS TEAM (constantly welcoming new members) 4. THE SOCIETY FOR BETTER GROWNUPS 5. TEAM TOMORROW 6. THE JOY REBELS 7. CIRCLE SQUAD 8. THE HUMAN KIND CLUB

With the release of my book Becoming Better Grownups I inducted people into ‘The Society for Better Grownups’. People who supported The Circles All Around Us became active members in ‘The Circle Squad’. Most recently while filming The Kindness Project, I gave out membership cards for new friends to be in ‘The Human Kind Club’.

Why in elementary school did I create membership cards and buttons for a “Cool Club”? Why, many years later, did I feel the need to present aquaintances with membership into ‘The Wonder Society’? Could I not just get business cards made?

The theme seems pretty obvious now as I look back, but when you’re in the middle of making stuff it’s not always so clear. “Be who you needed when you were younger” has been the starting place for so much of what I try do. It makes sense that a kid who grew up feeling like the odd one out would weave belonging and the desire for belonging into everything.

There’s lots of clubs you can join:

• The club for pilots who have had to use their emergency ejection seat

• The club for people who like to race lawnmowers

• The club for lovers of clouds

• The club for people who are alive, but have been registered as legally dead

Researchers have been saying we’re in the midst of a ‘loneliness epidemic’. Studies are finding a lack of community can cut years off your life. An 80 year Harvard study just revealed that close relationships can significantly delay physical and mental decline.

Wendell Berry’s words about membership and humanity should not be mistaken as sweet and sentimental. This is about survival. We need each other.

I want to belong and I want to make sure everybody else knows they belong. Now that I know this about myself, maybe I can be even *more* intentional about these little bonfires of belonging. Maybe I can help others feel less alone. Maybe you’ll join me?

Let’s pass out membership cards. Send invitations. Commence secret handshakes. Throw parties and let everybody know they have a seat at the table. Let’s draw the circles wider and wider ….

until love is known and felt everywhere,

p.s. New book releases March 21! Pre-orders are a huge help for new books like this!

1. Pre-order the book anywhere books are sold. 2. Sign up to get your pin here.