500 Words a Week - The Need to Belong
Nestled in our very human heart is a desire as old as our first beginnings. That is our desire to belong. To be seen, heard and valued. To be a member of a group or family. For once isolation for us, meant our certain demise.
When we belong in our modern world, we take it for granted. For we have allowed an insatiable desire for more to take over. Rather than viewing belonging as a few meaningful relationships, we have confused it for a need to be held to acclaim by vast amounts of strangers. People who know nothing about us, yet we crave their approval over the love we already have.
An increasing number of individuals feel no belonging. No belonging within or with those around them. Subdued and lost amongst a torrent of apps, notifications and scrolling.
To belong is not only to feel a part of a group, but to feel at one within.
We are at the behest of a growing sense of detachment. The mind and body feel separate. Our life doesn’t feel real, we are lost amongst the mind. A chasm forms, as we begin to retreat further into the lonely and isolated spaces of our mind. We experience a hollow sinking feeling to the depths of our stomach that we aren’t enough. We attempt to subdue and distract ourselves from these thoughts and feelings. Scrolling, watching, anything to hide from these feelings.
We wander through our days. Our body present, our spirit and mind absent, lost in the eternal realm of rumination. A growing feeling that something is missing. Something of importance lies just beyond our reach, just beyond the words we possess to describe what is missing.
We commence a journey, to weed out and find what we feel is missing. We follow where our thoughts lead us. We ask ourselves the difficult questions that we once hid from.
The flickering candle of curiosity we carry, lights up the dark corners of our mind where fear had ruled for too long.
As we venture further into these isolated spaces, we feel a familiar hand resting on our shoulder, showing us the way out. Bringing us back to where we first began our journey, only to realise what we thought was lost was around us this whole time. We forgot how to notice it. The belonging that is already around us and within. Of having a few other individual souls to go on the venture of life with, even if they aren’t beside us the whole time, we know they are only a message or phone call away.
As a by-product of our own journey, we know there is more beyond the surface of what people share. That everyone has their own struggles they are working through. We become more understanding and compassionate to those feeling lost. In our own way, we try to be the familiar hand to another, helping guide them out of the dark that we experienced. For we know it can become easy to get lost there without the support of another.
