Belonging

Deep in the heart of it, beyond all of our history and experience, there is an untouched place where longing lives; where every single one of us return, at some point or another, either slowly or always. This place knows the secret of wood smoke and winter – this place is where we yearn to belong. We were made to; to live in village and tribe and cluster and to the stars and galaxies and worlds.

And while we yearn to belong to each other, we also must learn to withstand the wilderness, because we yearn to belong there, too. We relate to the single star; we search for a stretch of untouched beauty in order to reclaim ourselves and our place in it all. We know our experience is ours alone.

Yet in our modern isolation, if left to our own for too long staring at screens and talking across airwaves, we swallow ourselves whole, and become vulnerable to fear and negativity. Without sustained connection to our selves, and without true connection to others, we stand naked in a winter field, and the base instinct for survival breaks apart what makes us human, at the heart. We belong to nothing now, except endless icy depths.

And here is where fear gets dangerous and armies rise with hate; here is where we go when there is nowhere we belong; with no learned resilience to the elements, and no safe way across the great divide, we are left on thin ice, and grab the first frayed rope slung in our general direction.

We need more ways to get each to the other, and back again. This constant dance between distance and intimacy, between solitude and solidarity, is an essential part of the human experience, but we must find better ways than single-minded cause or isolating despair. There must be a way to hold the complexity of our individuality without splintering from one another completely or becoming blind to nuance and critical thought. There must be a way to belong without being bound to dogma or by our shared disappointment in humanity.

Are we truly either completely alone, or tethered to one another so tightly that we are lost forever to our own souls and selves? Are we either one, or the other, and in being so, do we splinter from the whole and stand in stupid absolutes that are illusory at best – and dangerous at worst? Is our entire world a political debate, a vote for this or that? Must we choose sides, or could we choose connection?

Why not unite from the place that holds us all – separately and together? From this ancient, eternal yearning within each of us, that belongs to only us, and yet also speaks to all of us? From this deepest, purest human desire to belong, we could span entire worlds.

Why is love so quiet, and longing so secret? Why don’t we call each to the other to say that we are here? Why don’t we let each other go in their own direction without casting them out for all eternity?

Why don’t we march toward something greater side by side, across bridges and frozen fields?

Why don’t we dream out loud?