Can we belong where we’re not always aligned?

A part of the ‘Not Quite What You Meant‘ series

By: Ezra Nadav

There’s a peculiar pressure in modern community life, a pressure not just to get along, but to agree. To belong, it seems, one must often speak the same language of belief, adopt the same stances, laugh at the same memes, and share outrage at the same things.

Agreement has become the price of admission.

But what happens when we don’t?
What happens when we love someone, or belong to a group, and we just don’t see eye to eye?

This tension between belonging and agreement isn’t new, but it feels newly inflamed. We live in a time when “community” is often forged through shared positions, on politics, identity, language, even on which brands deserve to be boycotted this month. We’ve begun to confuse alignment with allegiance, and in doing so, we’ve made disagreement a threat rather than a conversation. To diverge, even slightly, can feel like betrayal. The result? We retreat into increasingly narrow circles where disagreement isn’t merely uncomfortable, it’s unacceptable.

But take a longer view. History, literature, even our own families tell a different story. Belonging has never required perfect alignment. It has, instead, required commitment, a willingness to show up, to stay present, even when staying is hard.

My grandfather and I disagreed on nearly everything: religion, politics, the right way to live a good life. He once shook his head at my convictions the same way I probably shook mine at his. But he taught me generosity in action. He showed me what it meant to care for people beyond your comfort zone. And I never once doubted his love for me.

That’s because true belonging isn’t built on agreement, it’s built on something deeper: shared values, mutual respect, and a commitment to holding space for complexity.

There’s a distinction worth pausing on: shared values versus shared opinions.
Opinions are weather systems, shifting, turbulent, sometimes reactionary. They’re shaped by headlines, timelines, algorithms, and emotion. They can change overnight. Values, by contrast, are architecture. They structure how we show up in the world. They shape what we’re willing to fight for, or forgive.

You can disagree with someone’s opinion and still share their values. You can both believe in dignity, in justice, in kindness and accountability, and still argue about what those look like in practice. When we forget this, we start building relationships on sand. We belong only as long as we comply. And we live in fear that one off-script moment might exile us from the room.

So what does it really mean to belong where we don’t always align?

It means staying in the room when the conversation gets uncomfortable.
It means choosing curiosity over condemnation.
It means listening long enough to understand, not just to reload.
It means letting go of the need to be right, and choosing instead to be in relationship.

And it’s hard. Of course it is. It’s far easier to unfriend, unfollow, disengage. It’s easier to flatten people into positions, to reduce them to a take, and to remove them when they no longer affirm our sense of moral clarity. But that’s not community. That’s curation.

Belonging, real belonging, asks more of us. It asks us to soften where we’d rather harden. To hold space for people who make us bristle. It asks us to name harm when we see it, yes, but also to know the difference between harm and discomfort. It asks us to tend to our boundaries without weaponising them.

There’s something deeply human in wanting to be seen, heard, and mirrored. But perhaps there’s something even more radical in being loved where we are not fully the same. In knowing we don’t have to perform agreement to earn our place. That we can speak, question, struggle, even get it wrong, and still be held with integrity.

At the end of the day, maybe belonging isn’t about fitting in.
Maybe it’s about being known, and still being welcomed.

Shalom Aleichem