The Feeling Has a Name
The World Cup taught me something about belonging that I've spent my career studying
Photo by Alex Grajeda
On her Substack, The Biology of Becoming, Pamela Cantor, M.D. writes about what the World Cup revealed about belonging — and why the feeling it created was never really about soccer.
For a few weeks, millions of people gathered around the same thing on the same schedule. Dr. Cantor turns to the science of why that mattered: a brain braced for threat settles when other people are nearby, and a brain that isn't braced has room to open up, notice more, and reach toward strangers.
When the tournament ended, the feeling didn't leave. What left was the rhythm. That part, she writes, we can build ourselves.
"Nobody becomes who they are alone." — Pamela Cantor, M.D.
Read the article on Substack
