There is so much emphasis on groupwork, teamwork, collective action, community, unity, mass mobilization and all the socio-culturally acceptable groupings of individuals (who were once quite unique entities before, thank you very much...) that the power of one gets overshadowed, underrepresented, and frequently misunderstood (to mean "a big ego") underneath all the hubris of group loyalty and devotion. Events such as training camps, workshops, and even those ubiquitous support groups that pepper city landscapes to address every single human trial and tragedy under the sun are not always the best possible remedy for someone seeking....for someone just seeking.
Humankind is complex, and the range of all the things that make us human, from our actions to emotions to circumstances, significantly impact how we deal with the challenges of working within "a community". Truth be told, most of us have been conditioned to accept the limitations of group norms and values. They are not necessarily unique to our individual selves, but because we need to survive in a world that imposes representations of the collective will upon us, we make compromises and change our behaviour to adapt to the standards of the group.
This denial of our true selves creates a lot of tension in our bodies, our psyches, and our spirits. We lose sight of who we essentially are OR who we could potentially be whenever we suffocate those precious dreams, goals, opinions, and ideas that make us distinct under layers and layers of communal constraints. The full range of human emotions and thoughts are not permitted to witness their talents in a group setting in order to safeguard the sanctity of "the group".
"The group" can often pick a person's flaws asunder and because many of us live in societies that teach us that everything is about competition and comparison especially when it comes to demonstrating "normality", we invariably make the mistake of facing ourselves off against others. It's hard to escape that. We either see ourselves reflected in the similar actions of another group member (and that's when things are comfortably favorable for us) OR in the opposing asymmetry of socially awkward and questionable approaches (eeks!...when things turn against us!). The latter isolates us from the group, and often leaves us feeling "different", demoralized, disliked, and depressed.
Some people don't have this problem of "fitting in" because they are "natural leaders" and/or "can fake it till they make it". But many others suffer horribly when their lives are run by the forces of supposedly natural laws that subsume each of their magnificent matchless dust to the rigors of the clan ethos.
Like drugs, groups don't always work. Sometimes, connecting with our essence takes a solo effort. Nothing wrong with that. Once we wade through the dictum and decorum of the four-walled spaces we've constructed for ourselves and for others, we might find what is authentic about the total soul. The total soul who was created from an explosion of particles that had no sense of borders, boundaries, and boardrooms.
Peace.
