A sense of belonging, from within and from those around you.

This week, transiting through Barcelona Prat Airport and arriving back at JFK Airport in NYC, both customs agents thought I belonged there.

The Policia Nacional in Barcelona asked why I hadn’t handed him my Spanish passport, as if I weren’t a minimum of nine years away from qualifying for one. 11 hours later, the customs agent at JFK quickly glanced at my picture on the Global Entry Screen and then my passport, handing it back without a word, free to go, free to return to being a New Yorker after a year and change away.

The Barcelona encounter left me gleeful, startled in the best of ways. I almost always am swiftly pegged as a foreigner in Spain – my accent gives me away if I speak, but even before that, my appearance doesn’t exactly sing “española.” The NYC one was to be expected, a welcome home. I lived for 12 years in NYC, and anyway, everybody belongs in NYC. There isn’t a look or style you must have to fit in.

Growing up and into adulthood, I never really felt that I was “of” a place, I never felt I “belonged” somewhere.

I don’t mean that in an angsty, melancholy way. It’s just that I’ve often been an odd duck, a “bicho raro” in that I combine characteristics, both that I was born into and that I chose or developed, that don’t tend to go together. But New York City and Barcelona are the two places I have felt the most myself, the most at home, in very different ways. The two places I have most yearned for when not there for an extended period.

Even as a kid, who lived in Davenport, Iowa, from birth until I left for college, I would often be asked where I was from, as if I couldn’t be from wherever I was at the time. My mom is from the Washington, D.C. area, and my dad from a farm in northwest Iowa, and apparently I had a mutt of an accent.

Sometimes, I would be exasperated that I was pegged as an outsider, not yet leaning or leaping into the fact that being the same as everyone is boring, that accentuating our differences enables us to soar. I would hesitate before volunteering an answer to a difficult question in class, cognizant that being singled out as too smart would get you teased. Studying abroad in Spain in college, I remember an afternoon in Toledo when I was walking in a non-touristy area and dressed head-to-toe in clothes from Zara (back when Zara was not ubiquitous in the U.S.) – two young men stopped in their car and asked me in English if I needed directions. Oblivious to the fact they were probably flirting with me, I fumed to my Spanish “mom” that I didn’t know how they had pegged me as a foreigner when I hadn’t spoken. She said, “Cariño (dear), you could have blond hair, blue eyes, or your skin complexion (pink undertones vs olive), or maybe two of those, but not all three.” That wasn’t entirely true as there are native Spaniards who have all three, but they are rare.

Mostly, I didn’t fully belong because I chose places to study, live and work where I was outside the norm. Most other Notre Dame students came from rich families. Almost all other sports reporters were men. Almost all Wharton MBA students came from the business world rather than journalism. Etc. etc.

So for a long time, I was choosing to do things that made me an outsider, or that made me stand out, depending on your viewpoint; yet not embracing that. I could have chosen to follow a close-to-home path, and I would have fit in in the eyes of others. Yet my wild and curious brain and soul would have been stifled.

At some point, I began to view those who embraced striking out on a unique path not as either something mythical creatures did or as something to be fearful of, but as a desirable and attainable path for me. If you lead a life where you take on many new challenges and adventures, you may fall in that precious middle space between never fully belonging in one spot and being able to sort of belong in a multitude of them. That’s me

There are two aspects to belonging, though. One is from within, when you have the confidence and self-assurance to feel you belong. One is not up to us, though. If people constantly tell you you don’t belong, because of your gender, birthplace, religion, race, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, wealth, age, style, personality or any of an endless litany of reasons, that can eat at your sense of belonging regardless of how confident you are.

I am at a point in life where the sense of belonging from within, I can hold onto in almost any circumstance. There is still a comfort in being around people who make you feel as if you belong, who welcome you and uplift you. Friends, colleagues, close family members, people in the community, groups you are part of like Pitch and Run NYC or previously Nike NYC, etc.

But sometimes a place also does that. For me, those are two: New York and Barcelona*. Arriving in either plasters a giant grin across my face. Both bring me immense joy.

New York is vibrant and hustling and welcoming to the world (no place is more diverse), full of promise and possibility and heartache. You can meet ANYONE. You can be whoever you want. And you can pursue any outrageous dream or objective because it can happen in NYC. At the same time, it will occasionally (for most of us) feel like you are running despite an anchor, be it the cost of rent or child care or paying back student loans. Yet you can also have a trampoline in that such a phenomenal wealth of brilliance, talent and creativity in every sector is in the city, and you can reach many of those people either via strategic outreach, creatively finding the right person to connect you, or just happenstancing into meeting someone at a coffeeshop or chatting on the subway (yes, I do that sometimes) or at an event.

Barcelona is design-forward, embracing the sea and the mountains, entrepreneurial, a challenger and avant-garde at once. It is creative and open to the new, while proud of traditions and heritage. The city’s urbanistic layout is heralded around the world, and the colorful curves of modernist architecture are softer than the buildings in most cities. In Barcelona, I am presumed to be from somewhere else, but there are is a huge population of immigrants. And while many talk of los catalanes as “cerrados” or “closed/guarded”, I haven’t experienced that. Perhaps my unbridled enthusiasm and passion for Barcelona breaks down any walls.

In Barcelona, I mostly feel I belong for reasons from within, that I love it so that I hardly notice anything that would contradict that cocoon of warmth. On Wednesday, the customs agent gave me some external validation of belonging.

Then I arrived in NYC, and fitting into the woodwork and knowing just where to go for the quickest transit or the best coffee brought its own sense of belonging. So did the next morning, when I went in for a bagel and on hearing the workers speak amongst themselves in Spanish, I said “gracias,” and the cashier immediately switched to Spanish.

The two customs experiences, followed by the conversation in Spanish at the bagel shop, brought to mind what it feels like to belong somewhere. Over the past couple days, that sense of deep comfort permeated, as I caught up with good friends over food or drinks at places that reminded me of a pre-2014 NYC Marathon meal or my birthday 6 years ago, went wandering on familiar-to-my-bones streets, ran with the Pitch and Run community, and devoured favorite dishes that I can’t get in Spain. Almost done writing last night, I left for dinner. On the sidewalk outside the building where I am staying, somebody had etched my initials in the sidewalk: KOB.

En casa, aquí y allá.

At home, here and there.

Reads of the week

• Lifeguard training not following standards and cutting corners, while drowning is the leading cause of death in US for children 1-4

• The risk not taken in life, a marvelous read by Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn

• Ugly battle between a MAGA couple apparently targeting an LGBTQ couple that owns a restaurant

• Data visualization of aging population

• Anti-autocracy? You can’t vote for Trump.

• Fascinating read on medical divergence in outcomes by David Epstein

• For Katie, a Stanford soccer player who committed suicide, by USWNT player Naomi Girma

Listens

• Women Blazers with Kelly Lewis

• Storytelling - Adam Grant with Baratunde Thurston

Watch

• French World Cup video - this is simply phenomenal