Feeling the Pain of Fragmentation? You can choose to belong

Many of us feel the pain of fragmentation in our day to day lives. Often, we experience it as separation between people, as well as from the natural world. That pain is real.  If you are anything like me, you live in a fragmented world, driving—or even flying—back and forth to so many places all the time, calling your beloveds to feel close even for a moment, aching for connection. 

Sadly, this is the reality of our world these days.  I live far away from my birth family, as well as from many of my closest friends. I am good at staying in touch, but still feel that pain and longing of missing people who are very dear to me.  And, when I started to realize how distanced I was from the natural world, I felt the pain of that separation as well.

That kind of fragmentation is built into our modern culture, and, as far as I can tell, keeps us somewhat  unhealthy.  There are many ways that this manifests in our lives; for now I want to focus on our capacity to belong.  

It is really natural to want to belong to something larger than yourself—family, community, friendship, for example. Humans are inherently social creatures and it is in our nature to connect to others, to belong to groups. 

The fragmentation you experience in your daily life can really easily lead you to notice the ways and places where you don’t feel like you belong, before you notice the things you have in common. It can lead to seeing yourself as different from others, before you see yourself as connected.  It can lead to a very strong sense of us vs them, or even me vs them, and can leave you feeling quite alone. 

Choosing to belong means choosing to recognize, first, what you have in common with others, even with the ones with whom you disagree. 

Choosing to belong is remembering your inherent relations with the natural world, and how deeply dependent your life is upon the earth, air, fire, water. 

Choosing to belong is about recognizing that actually, we all have the same basic needs and that you probably share much more with others than you might initially realize. 

Too often, choosing not to belong, or to other yourself, becomes a default because it can be scary to try to actually connect, especially when you are so accustomed to fragmentation. 

Simply recognizing yourself as part of a larger whole can make a huge difference, opening the possibility to call upon the natural world for support, to contradict some of the loneliness that characterizes modern life, and from there to choose to belong to friendship, to community, even if it doesn’t look exactly how you might have pictured.