The Sense of Belonging 1/4

We have to come from somewhere. We may try to forget, regret or try to erase that fact or we may, on the contrary, make an effort to reclaim our origins, homeland or traditions, but our personal or family past will always be an important part of our being and our identity. Whether we like it or not, we belong to our memories. Origins, surroundings, smells, parents or no parents, perhaps a house and perhaps a street, peace or family rows, war, smiles, tears, presences and absences: we are inhabited by what we have inhabited, what we still inhabit, and what we will always inhabit. Life is short, and none of the important events we remember will ever disappear: images return or fade away, echo and mirror one another, speak with one voice or clash in the midst of our joys, pain, doubts or hopes. We are always looking for ‘something’ in the light of our past-belonging, because we want to rediscover certain joys, a few habits and a friendly or loving presence, or because we want to avoid suffering, abandonment, disappointment, pain or violence. We are sometimes surprised to find a likeness between the people who were once with us and those who are with us now, and sometimes we are surprised to find that they are quite different in terms of their character and temperament. It is as though we spent our lives looking for similarities or hoping to find something very different. Our past shapes our present and colours our future. Every encounter, every smile, every tear and every mirror reminds us that we really do belong to the past. What are we looking for? What are we looking for as we wander the world, with its countries and its horizons, as we look into the eyes and hearts of those who love us and those we love, and in our moments of solitude and introspection? What  are we looking for? Probably for well-being, peace, reassurance, harmony and love.

Our past sometimes helps us and sometimes hinders us. We always have to revisit the past, understand it, disentangle it, tame it and forget it, but we can never really flee from it. We have to live with it and come to terms with it. When we turn to the future, it is our present: we are always looking for the places, the loves and the meanings to which we belong. We know that we have to seek and, basically, to find. Sometimes we do not even know what we are looking for, and at other times we know exactly what we have to find, but cannot not find it. And sometimes we have already found what we are still looking for. This is disturbing, and difficult. And as we wander, we really want to belong to ourselves, to be ourselves and to feel that we possess ourselves.

There is nothing new about this. This search for a sense of belonging can be seen in the world’s oldest traditions and philosophies, and we find it in the torments of the most modern minds and the most recent psychological theories. Something dwells within me, and I must succeed in dwelling within it if I am to find harmony, experience equilibrium and set myself free. My past reminds me, and so do my heart and my consciousness: I come from somewhere, and I have to choose a destination. I am bound and free … and I am also free to remain bound and not to look for anything. Lao Tzu said, ‘I do not act, the Tao (Way) acts me,’ in order to emphasize that force that led him on his quest for freedom was already that of the object of his quest. What he was seeking made him seek: the liberation of the ‘self’ consisted in reconciling the direction in which we must go with the destination we have chosen, and reconciling the Way with the destination. We must belong to our path if the path is to belong to its goal, and if we are to belong to ourselves fully and freely. Socrates says exactly the same thing at the beginning of the Symposium, when he talks about love and remarks that we can only seek that which we know must be sought. He is pointing out that there is a close connection between what has made us, what is making us, and what we are trying to do and experience. Love, like the quest for spiritual liberation, is very revealing: much of the self is in its object. The paradoxical words of Christ, the ‘hidden God’ to whom Blaise Pascal refers, reveal the same essential truth: ‘You would not seek me if you had not found me’ (Pensées # 919) God obviously already dwells within those who seek Him. Once again, the encounter is a reconciliation: it then becomes possible to dwell with our hearts in that which naturally dwells within us. Finding, consciously and freely, what drove us from ourselves, either unwittingly or as a matter of urgency, actually means, in other words, retaking possession of ourselves, belonging to ourselves and finding peace. Here, the words of Christ indicate that this really is about God, and the revelation we find in all three monotheisms echoes Psalm XVI, in which David, according to the Jewish tradition ‘finds refuge in’ the God who dwells within him. This experience of devequt (clinging to) allows David to find a refuge and a dwelling place. He finds peace and can link his destiny to his fate: ‘The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup; thou maintainest my lot’. The Muslim tradition confirms the meaning of these teachings: the Revelation calls upon the faithful to raise ‘[his] face [devote himself to] towards the religion, a sincere monotheist, according to the natural aspiration (fitra) in which God has created Man’ (Quran, 30: 30). The faithful must turn their faces toward God, fight against the veil of illusion and forgetfulness and return, through their will power and memory, to His truth: ‘Surely in the remembrance of God are hearts comforted’ (Quran, 13: 28).

The object of the quest may not be the liberation of the ‘self’, as in the Eastern and Asian traditions, or love or God, but the various schools of modern psychology formulate the same goal when it comes to defining the meaning of therapy. It has to do with getting back to ourselves, trying to understand what drives us, the way we function, our blocks, needs, expectations and wounds, and analysing them so that we may master them. We want to stop ‘putting up with ourselves’. We want to be able to ‘belong to ourselves’ and, whilst it may be a matter of ‘giving ourselves’, as in friendship or love, we would like it to mean not ‘being dispossessed of ourselves’ (willingly or otherwise), but on the contrary to give ourselves fully and consciously. There is a great difference between the feelings that life seems to steal from us and those our being can master and offer like so many gifts. Retracing our past, attempting to gain access to the tensions within our unconscious (assuming that we believe in it and that it exists) and analysing our behaviours and reactions is indeed an attempt to identify what dwells in our psyche, to understand what causes us to act and react in one way or another. It is going into ourselves, going home, understanding and giving our conscience and will the power and means to decide how we behave and what we expect from ourselves and others.

The natural quest for belonging is a quest for well-being. Those men and women who decide to forget themselves and to lose possession of themselves, by drinking alcohol or using drugs for example, are seeking a well-being that their lucid consciousness seems to deny them. It is as though they had decided to lose possession of themselves at a superficial level because they feel at some deeper level that they are run through with a feeling of self-dispossession, with a void. We find other complex behaviours in certain adolescents and adults who seem to be always on the lookout for confrontation and conflict. They give the impression that they are never at peace and are not in search of ‘peace’, rather as though aggression and tensions were the states that made them feel at their best. We are dealing with a twofold phenomenon that has been studied in some depth: they look for trouble because doing so masks their deep unease about themselves. The individual is also under the impression that his hostility towards others allows him to assert his well-being and to feel at ease with himself. In most cases, aggression and looking for trouble hide expectations and demands of a different kind: they are a way of pushing the other to his limits, forcing him to demonstrate his attachment, love, and to express recognition and gratitude in spite of everything. Although they are complicated and complex, these modes of behaviour do not, however, call into question the elements we were discussing earlier. Human beings who behave like this are trying to regain possession of themselves in the eyes of others; they need the mediation, recognition, love and trust of others. Their aggression is often a form of communication, and looking for trouble is a way of looking for love. The other or others – those they love or with whom they live – determine the world to which they belong, and their real or symbolic violence is their way of entering that world and living in it in order to be seen and recognized and of ensuring that they have a place in it, ‘their place’. The relationship with the self and the group is especially important, at both the psychological and the normative level.

Spirituality, psychology and the law allow us to approach the question of belonging in holistic terms. As we have just seen, the psychological dimension is of fundamental importance and relates to many different orders that are always interacting: the quest for the truth in which we wish to dwell, the inner balance that allows us to belong, and our presence within the family, group and society to which we actually belong. Belonging always obeys certain rules: the truths of Eastern spiritualities and religions demand, without exception, discipline, effort and a scrupulous respect for what are often very precise rites. Introspection, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are exacting, and require a framework, norms and stages: without them, they will not work. Belonging to a community means obeying laws that define obligations and rights, a typology of degrees of belonging (citizens, residents, immigrants and so on) and a normative framework for their interaction. In contemporary pluralistic societies, we can see that the law is necessary because it regulates and protects, but it is not enough in itself: we also have to take into account the psychological dimension that completes (or undermines) our sense of belonging to a group. Cultural and religious diversity promotes that sense of belonging, provided that beliefs and sensibilities are collectively recognized and respected even before the law intervenes. The individual then feels that he belongs to a community that ‘comprehends’ him in both sense of the term: it comprehends his values in intellectual terms and ‘takes him’ in as a full and legitimate member of its organization. This is not a legal issue; it is a matter of collective psychology and sensibilities. And we live in troubled times in which dominant and legitimate sensibilities can exclude what the law has already integrated.