I seems so wrong that anyone could think that someone belonged to them. It seems equally wrong for anyone to think that they belonged to someone and took comfort in that notion.
I recognize that I have bought into both sides of this notion of belonging, but hopefully no more. It is wrong to reduce the beautiful spirit and free independence of anyone to the attitude I might have to ownership or property. I still struggle with the lingering traces of a habit of feeling like I want to belong.
Like most people, I was taught from an early age that I belonged to my parents, and that got terribly mixed up with their wanting to be my support and protection. They came to own me, and I owed them. Breaking that deeply forged sense of belonging has not come easily. Unfortunately, I have managed to transfer my sense of belonging to others. There is a great comfort in surrendering to someone else’s ownership.
There certainly are powerful cultural structures that promote a deep feeling of belonging. Slavery is not a huge part of our culture but many of us give ourselves into servitude to individual bosses or organizations. Those bosses and organizations commonly treat us as though we belonged to them. We get a feeling of acceptance, validation and comfort when we belong.
Marriage, as practiced in my culture, also surrounded me with a circle of belonging. The words of songs still float through my head, reminding how I belonged to someone and they belonged to me. I still struggle against this notion. It is a perverse concept rooted in early agricultural cultures when owning property and products became the norm. I too, like the early agronomists, felt I was owned by someone and they owned me.
This mal-formed kind of relationship is learned in childhood, and for me and most of my friends, carried into adulthood. We retain a sense of ownership of someone’s time, attention and affection. We have a strong feeling of betrayal and violation if someone strays outside the domain we have mutually established. It is hard to determine which is stronger, the desire to belong or the desire to have someone else belong to me. I don’t think either is helpful or encourages well-being.
The standard of belonging is falsely applied to just about any kind of relationship, so strong is this habit part of me. Attempting to be a dominant force in someone’s life is played out in so many situations: friendships, meetings, organizations. I think none are more damaging than the practices around coupling. In our culture, it is so acceptable, even encouraged, to place someone, maybe only part of them, in a glass cabinet to stare at and admire, to care for and protect, to take pleasure in possessing. Disappointment, jealousy, resentment all can happen if the glass cabinet is ignored.
I hope, instead, to create moments when I can simply be immersed in other people’s presence. Those would be moments when we can see and witness the free spirit of one another, feel the flutter of unfolded wings, not experience the tug of fetters of belonging.
I am sad that land belongs to individuals, that plants belong to gardeners, and that people belong to someone else. It is not the nature of things to belong, and it is not my desire to either belong or to possess. I do not want to take false security in promises of belonging when it is neither mine to give or to receive.