On answers in a nanosecond, and the thing that stays slow.
October 29, 2026
by Richard Yung Chung
So… a long time ago, I tried wearing a cowboy outfit during Calgary Stampede. A big mistake.
The cowboy shoes are too skinny for my wide feet, hat is too narrow for my large round head, and the pants were too skinny for my large thigh and long for my short legs. Not good.
I wanted to look like Clint Eastwood in his cowboy outfit, but instead, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I looked like one of those guys in the movie “Three Amigos”. Yeah, not good.
It don’t fit.
I don’t fit in to a cowboy outfit.
I don’t fit into a white church so well.
Not my size, not my liking, not my tribe.
That last one I should probably explain, since I have spent my entire working life inside a white church and nobody made me stay.
It is not a complaint. It is a description. There are rooms you can be welcome in for forty years and still not be of, and most people who have ever been the only one of something in a room will know exactly what I mean.
Well, of course, there are other places and occasions I don’t fit in well. Even after over 50 years living in Canada, certain things are just so hard to get used, like I used to attend cocktail parties way back.
I didn’t like it. I just didn’t fit in.
What do people usually talk about at cocktail parties … nothing!
People just stand around, with drinks in their hands, dressed nice and talk about nothing.
Now, I know some of you love mingling with others and chat about nothing. Some people call it socializing. Bless you if you like to socialize like that. Not me, but my wife enjoys it a lot.
So, I used to go to the year end cocktail parties because my wife dragged me there and found myself regretting why did I listen to her. I should’ve stayed home and watch oilers hockey game.
There are many situations I don’t fit in so well. So, I tend to avoid those places, except when my wife drags me there. “you will get used to it, Richard – expand your horizon — no wonder you have no friends.”
I have been thinking about the difference between fitting in and belonging, because they are not the same thing and it took me most of a career to see it.
Fitting in is something you do to yourself. You work out what the room requires for example the clothes, the vocabulary, the jokes and you supply it, and if you are good at it nobody notices you at all. That is the goal. To not be noticed.
Belonging is something a room does to you. And you cannot manufacture it from your side, no matter how well you dress.
The best places I have ever been were not full of people who matched. They were full of people who plainly did not, and who had somehow been fitted together anyway.
So, once I had a church member, an elderly saint, referred me as – “Oriental”. And I was like — “I don’t think she should call me or refer me as an Oriental.” That’s an outdated term and could even be labeled as a – “micro aggression” – is she a racist?
But I didn’t say anything. I mean I could have stopped her right there and then lectured and corrected her, enlightened her of her white privilege language and how she was totally stuck in a dark Middle Ages and need to get out of her darkness.
I could have put on my Social Justice Warrior hat right there and then but I didn’t. I just listened. And we had a good conversation.
Why didn’t I feel offended?
Well I know her; she is loving, committed, devoted, and faithful individual and church member. I know her heart. I know her heart and how she serves the people with such dedication, totally committed and loving.
And she has helped me to feel belong in the church.
I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this story that I do not mean.
I am not saying people should swallow whatever is said to them. Some words come out of real contempt, and I have met those too, and they should be named for what they are. The difference is not that I am tolerant. The difference is that I knew her, and I knew what was underneath the word, and the word was the only thing that was wrong.
Her language might not be updated or correct, but her heart is in a correct, right place.
She is all heart!
That I have been on both sides of this, is the thing.
I have been the man in the wrong clothes at the party, standing by the wall, wishing he were home watching the hockey.
And I have been the man deciding whether the clumsy sentence of somebody else was worth a war.
What I notice is that the people who made room for me were almost never the ones with the correct vocabulary, but the full of heart.
Fitting together is not a skill but an art … the art of love.
Richard
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Prior Newsletters from Slow Wisdom :
Money In the Attic … September 22nd
Crow In The Mall … September 15th
If It Makes You Taller … September 8th
The Look On My Daughters Face … September 1st
You and Your Tongue … August 25th
The Secret To My Vegetables … August 18th
Me and My Rabbits … August 11th
The City That Forgot Me … August 4th
The Day Jesus Was Rude … July 28th
My Fifty Dollar Titanic … July 21st
I Shouted At The Prime Minister … July 15th
I Told My Church I Ate Grasshoppers … July 7th
Thankful For The Hospital Food … July 1st
My Goal Was To Finish and Not Die … June 24th
The Wedding Afro … June 17th