Where We Belong

I’ve been thinking lately about how there are some aspects to existence that, while distinctly separate from the concept of survival, are absolutely vital to our lives.  I’m looking at this summer with varying degrees of excitement and apprehension.  It is going to be a most exciting and jarring form of transplantation.  I’m going to be in a place that I’ve never been, doing a job that I’ve never done, for people I’ve never met.  As I move from what has become a familiar and comfortable context into something much more uncertain, I’ve been thinking about what it means to belong in a place.

Really, what I’ve been wondering if we can belong anywhere. We can certainly become acclimated to any situation.  But is there one place that “fits” us better than any other?  It’s a similar question as to last week’s question about whether there is someone we are “meant” to be.  I wonder even if the place we are meant to be is exactly where we are right now.

That being said, I think there are two parts of any physical location that are absolutely essential to include in our understanding of truly being and belonging in that place.  First, people belong in nature.  Second, people belong with one another.

It is very easy, when talking about weighty intellectual and spiritual things, to divorce the consideration of self, purpose, and truth from the physical reality around us.  Looking outside through a window or at a picture does not begin to compare with the actual experience of it.  Find some dirt and play in it.  Take a deep breath.  Gaze into the horizon.  Wherever I am, I want to have a fascination with where I am.  It’s easy to take the outdoors for granted (even in Oregon) but I always feel like a dry and shriveled husk when I’m indoors for too long.

Second, people belong with people.  To be sure, everyone has his or her mix of extroverted and introverted tendencies.  But real contact (beyond email, Facebook, or even letters) is so much deeper and more important.  I’m going to a locale where I don’t know anyone, but I want to invest myself fully into new relationships there, rather than a long-distance dependency on the ones I already have.  I want to make friends and become rooted, for however long I can.  C.S. Lewis put it very well when he said, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create.)  It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

The long and the short of it is:  I’m going to a new place this summer.  I want to do everything that I can in order to fully and meaningfully belong there.  This means paying conscious attention to my physical location and the people who are around me.  I want to live while I’m there … not just live there.