You need to fit in or i accept you, the choice is ours

​Meredith Ayala says, "you don't have to fit in when you belong."

When it comes to life, especially young lives, the difference between one trying to fit in and one knowing they belong can be the difference between life and death.

There's a rapidly moving convergence in the lives of young people: a greater sense of alienation and a growing rate of incidences of self-harm, suicidal ideations and completed suicides.

Why is it so damaging for one to feel like they don't belong?

People who feel like they belong have greater access to emotional support from friends and mentors and family members. At a time when our young people are experiencing more stress than ever, it's the emotional support they get from the people around them that serves as a key to their resilience.

But if they are fighting to fit in, not only are they denied access to that support, fighting to fit in can become the greatest and most lethal stressor of all.

I am not a big fan of the term self-esteem. Self-esteem often relies on me feeling good about all the characteristics of me the human.

I'm a much bigger fan of the idea of self-worth, which really suggests that I have worth simply because I am human. My value isn't found in what makes up my being, but quite simply in the truth that I AM a being.

More and more young people don't feel a sense of self-worth. Often because they are being challenged to change things about themselves that on the outside would make them seemingly more worthy, which only tends to hide them from the truth that their mere being makes them worthy.

God created us all worthy. Human interactions with one another only praise God for that or else work implicitly or explicitly to deny that truth of God's creation.

Why is any of that important in this conversation?

When young people feel accepted and valued by others, their worth is honored. Which leads to a strong sense of self-worth. And when young people know they are valued simply for being, their confidence in their ability to overcome challenges grows.

Exponentially.

Social media takes a lot of heat in this particular discussion. And I will never argue that social media is a friend to the health and wellness of our kids. That's a much longer discussion for another day.

But I will say this. No young person - or person in general, really - is going to turn to a screen to feel their worth if they are overwhelmed by acceptance and a celebration of worth from the real life humans around them.

Social media is a symptom not a cause.

So what do we do?

Start more conversations with kids by asking them who they are and not telling them who they should or could be.

Promote schools, workplaces and communities with foundations built on developing the celebration of worth and acceptance and not developing economic prosperity.

If you see a kid spending too much time in a screen, consider the possibility it's not a screen time issue but rather a case that no one has asked that kid to go fishing or hiking or star gazing or to the library.

After food and water, there is nothing more critical to human survival than a human's sense of belonging. For as far back as we can trace, if one hasn't belonged to a group, they have not survived.

For the longest time that was because of so many external threats; we needed each other to fight off the dangers or to hunt down our nourishment.

But today many of those external threats are no longer threats. Yet the threats are not gone, they are simply more internal.

The internal battle to fit. To belong. Maybe it's a predator not nearly as visible as the predators faced by ancient tribes, but it's a predator still the same.

The good news is, this is a predator we all have it within us to defeat. Defeat forevermore.

It starts with recognizing we all have worth simply because we are living. A worth that was declared worth celebrating at the moment of our creation.

The question is, have we decided that people need to live a certain way to maintain their worth? In many cases the answer has become yes. And in many of those cases people are deciding life isn't worth living.

We have the power to decide this isn't acceptable; it starts with making all people feel more acceptable.

You need to fit in, or I accept you.

The choice is ours.