…belonging

Time & Investment… and affinity. The stuff belonging is made of.

I had calories for breakfast with a new friend.  I like him.  but he’s new.  You can only go so deep.  Only share so much ‘belonging’.

(Oh, calories? Yeah, it was like pancakes, steak, eggs, french toast, cheese, sugar, sugar, syrup, apple, one walnut.  Maybe a little more sugar.)

Anyway, I have been in a pursuit of belonging lately.  Not happiness. Perhaps I believe that happiness comes with belonging. I don’t know if it does.  What stands in the way of belonging?  Language, buzz words, songs, partially assuming the same point of reference. They are also what make belonging fun.  You know that feeling when you know what everyone is talking about?  You share the same secrets and joys and ideals.  And you use all the same words to talk about all those things. But sometimes, it makes you talk around subjects. The effort to understand the depth of sorrow or contentment or struggle in someone’s heart is more difficult.  Because in the belonging marked by the trappings of sameness, we assume.

So maybe I have been looking for belonging in order to prove that it’s not what I think.  What we think. It’s not buzz words, or language or customs.  Those things maybe just take the place of actual belonging, or form around belonging and need to be fought. I think if something belongs to me I own it.  I am, therefore, responsible for it.  Not in a “conform or depart”  or a “conform or be forgotten” or a “you are incapable of self care” sort of way, but more of a “it’s my job to understand and accept and love what belongs to me”.  This takes a lot more words,  a lot more work, a lot more time, a lot more me- on both sides.

I like my new friend and in some ways I am sad that I find myself not only IN conversation, but outside of it – examining, evaluating, perceiving. I wonder, do I really want the intensity I seem to be seeking?  Or am I looking for easy?  Either way, I seem to be mildly disappointed. My guess is that it’s neither.  Depth and comfort aren’t the same as intensity and ease. See what I mean?

So, I wander. Just a little.  In my mind and in my heart.  Poking around, looking for meaning and belonging and depth and comfort with just a smidge of intensity and ease.  😉