The Edge of the Crowd

What to do when belonging costs too much.

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Not long ago, someone asked me for a piece of advice I wished I’d had in my twenties. I didn’t have to think long.

Lose your tribe.

It’s not the kind of thing you’ll find on a motivational poster. We’re told from a young age to find “our people,” to surround ourselves with like-minded friends, colleagues, and communities that will support us. And there is much value in that—we need belonging to survive. But there’s a shadow side to the modern obsession with tribe that’s harder to name.

The word “tribe” sounds warm and earthy. It conjures images of shared meals, inside jokes, and a deep sense of home. But in the modern world, given the role that technology plays in our lives, it more often functions as a gravitational field—shaping our desires, our speech, and even our moral judgments in ways we don’t fully notice. If you’ve ever found yourself nodding along with something you didn’t quite agree with just to avoid friction with ‘your people’, you’ve felt it.

That reflex to conform isn’t new. What’s new is how much harder it has become to resist. Social media, polarized politics, and a culture of constant performance have turned many of our tribes into 24/7 feedback loops. They watch us, and we watch them. We live under a permanent referendum.

The danger isn’t just that we’ll go along with things we don’t believe; it’s that, over time, we’ll stop noticing the difference between what we believe and what they believe. We trade a solid sense of self for a pseudo-self—a version of ourselves designed to fit the group, to keep the peace, to stay liked. We negotiate who we are and what we stand for in real time.

I’ve been there. I’ve stayed too long in groups that once gave me life but eventually made me forget my deepest convictions, what I call thick desires. I’ve bitten my tongue when I should have spoken up. I’ve let relationships become transactions.

And I’ve learned—slowly, sometimes painfully—that losing your tribe can be an act of fidelity: not against the group, but toward the truth.

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Losing your tribe doesn’t mean disappearing into isolation. It doesn’t mean burning bridges or holding grudges. It means being willing to stand apart long enough to see clearly—long enough to recover your ability to respond to reality itself, not just to a group’s version of it.

That’s harder than it sounds. Our social attachments run deep. When we step away, even briefly, we feel the anxiety of disconnection. We worry about being misunderstood, excluded, or replaced. And sometimes, those things happen.

But something else happens, too: the static clears. We can hear our own voice again. We can encounter people and ideas without running them through the filter of “What will my people think?”

If we’re lucky, we return to the group with new eyes.

Sometimes we rejoin it, this time as a truer, more solid, version of ourselves. Sometimes we find that the group itself has changed, or that we’ve outgrown it.

Either way, the ability to belong without surrendering your self is forged in those in-between spaces—outside the crowd, but not against it.

I’m not romanticizing exile. Losing your tribe isn’t comfortable. But comfort is not the same as health, and many groups survive by keeping us just comfortable enough to stay.

The point of belonging is not to disappear into the group; it’s to become more fully yourself in the company of others who are doing the same.

When belonging demands your selfhood as payment, it’s time to walk away—at least for a season.

If you’ve been feeling the low hum of dissonance in your gut, the subtle sense that you’ve been editing yourself for the sake of the group, maybe it’s time. Not to lose every connection, but to loosen your grip. Step outside the circle for a while. See who you are without the chorus.

If the belonging is real, it will survive your absence. If it’s not, you may have lost your tribe—but you’ll have kept your self. And that’s a trade worth making.

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