finding your tribe

I've always had this thing about not fitting in.  I've never felt "normal," and have always wondered what it would be like to be like "everyone else."
I don't want to be different (though at times I've certainly wished to be so) because I'm pretty darn used to being me and would hate to have to adjust to being someone else, but I accepted years and years ago that I am simply different.
my friend kathryn, in talking about connecting with other people, uses an expression I love, finding your tribe.  I love believing that I have a tribe, that I come from a people like me, that I'm not alone.  somewhere out there--spread out, few and far between, wherever they are--my fellow tribe members exist, living their lives, possibly with a similar little ache deep within to find and connect with others of the same.

this is why I wave at all the other cyclists I see out there.

yep.  because I figure, at some level, these people are in my tribe.  for them to be out there, riding their bicycles up and down a canyon, they must feel a similar pull to the one I feel.  deep within their dna must be a similar coding to mine, one that says go out, be in nature, push your body, feel the power, the communion, the joy of it all.  
I feel this kinship, I acknowledge this similarity, I honor those common traits and desires and dreams we share, and I wave to them to say yes, I belong to your tribe.  

once back home and showered, dressed in street clothes, at work, we may have little in common.  we might be hard-pressed to find shared roots or paths.  but it's likely we will connect, always, in that desire to pedal, to climb, to be in the midst of trees and dirt and sky and wind.  fellow members of my cycling tribe will always receive a wave, a lifting and lowering of the head, a nod to the fact that we share a common thread that will always, forever, connect us in a way more beautiful than we'll ever now.