Dear reader,
I spent a significant portion of this year worrying over a specific thing, and obviously it went by rather smoothly. And instead this other thing that I didn’t worry about at all - the thing I didn’t even hold space for in my mind or my heart - is the one that brought me crashing down.
Life, almost always, works this way doesn’t it? Worry creeps in, playing the role of a distraction, a red herring, an agent meant to hoodwink us, to lead us astray. And I give in to its deceit every single time.
So once I had some time and space away from the incident, I sat down to trace out why I had unravelled. And the answer lay in wanting to belong.
There’s a thin line between the two extremes of cutting everyone out of your life and chopping yourself up in a bid to fit in; poles I oscillate between; a tightrope dance that I can’t seem to master.
And I’ve spent so many summers attempting to find a space to belong in, that it almost became my second skin, my default setting. But it’s only when I put my quest aside, move beyond my expectations and my desires, that I can see that I already have a space I fit in, a space I belong within. So why do I still crave it everywhere I go?
But this need is certainly neither new, nor unique.
John Donne wrote “No man is an island, entire of itself” and Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal: “How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
Virginia Woolf, had her own way of belonging: “I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling. Yes, I belong to moments. Not to people.”
Jhumpa Lahiri crossed the oceans, literally, and found herself in Italy, within the Italian language. She had to undertake that journey, in a bid to finally belong; to find a space that felt like hers.
And perhaps, writers have always written, in a bid to arrive at that point, at that elusive place, where they finally feel home.
But scientific research tells us that the need to belong may even come from our collective past in the cave - where being a part of a group was necessary to survive the wild.1 So it is ingrained in our DNA, lingering there from our very origins. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs too includes love and belongingness as a part of its pyramid.
But how do we reconcile that need, in our world today? We can’t simply be guided by it at all times, rushing headfirst into walls of glass and concrete, in a bid to get to a group that’s beyond it?
In the bright light of the morning, I find myself scratching my head, wondering why my days are spent chasing all of these spaces that don’t fit me. It’s unfathomable to me that I’m attempting to squeeze into a place that has shut itself off to me, that I’m trying to prise open these glass doors with my bleeding fingernails.
And when I look into the mirror, I see the tailorbird that visits me.
Every summer this tailorbird finds its way to my bedroom window, tapping on the glass with its beak. And no matter what I do to save it from accidentally hurting itself on the glass - tying up the curtains, papering the window, attempting to gently explain to it that it might hurt itself - it comes back, every day, resembling a forlorn, lovestruck creature.
I wonder if it is the coolness of the room that attracts it, or if it is fascinated by the hummingbirds etched onto the sheer curtains that sway gently in the summer breeze. Or perhaps it just likes this spot, perhaps this is its happy place. I don’t know.
But watching it flit around the window this morning made me think of all the things we do even when we know hurt is waiting for us around the corner.
Perhaps I will never find the answer to if I belong, or if I don’t. And perhaps, inspite of the bleeding nails and the shards of broken glass embedded in my skin, I’ll never belong, even when I manage to make it into the room. And perhaps this need will break me, every single time.
But I cannot banish it. I can only attempt to understand it, and I can learn to wait to chip away at the glass until after I’ve understood why I’m doing it.
And maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald’s said it best: “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
Perhaps, the insides of books, deep into the pages, in the spaces between the words - that is where we can all belong.
The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation - Roy F Baumeister, Mark R Leary
Pours out of the pen effortlessly each time 👏👏