My strongest sense of belonging would be within myself. I didn't have that for a very long time, so regardless of who I was with or where I was, I really didn't feel like I truly belonged... Beyond that, I feel it with a few people I'm very close to in my life and within a few activities that I love. And when I'm in NYC; certain neighborhoods make me feel alive.

I wouldn't describe myself as particularly alienated or isolated but I have never felt especially like I belong, either. I probably have more actual sense of belonging to place than to people.

I am guessing I'm a bit tone deaf. For example there's a guy right across the street from me that I've tried to connect with for several years but he never seems to be out of the house, it's hard to run into him organically. Literally in six years the only thing that happened is we were both shoveling snow at the same time one morning and he looked like he was struggling so I went over and helped him for awhile and we spoke for a bit. But he didn't follow up. Fast forward to this past 8 months, his wife got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and she died just before New Year's Day. Now he's busted open a little and we've done a few activities together. I was widowed before also, and understand his mindset as well as anyone is going to. So .... we are finally getting to know each other, but he's likely to move away in the coming months to be closer to extended family, right about the time he gets used to relating to me.

All my connections seem hard to bootstrap and strangled for oxygen and short-lived like that. The good news is, it doesn't particularly perturb me; it seems my actual social needs are quite modest. It just baffles me a little, that it seems to flow so naturally for some people, but on the other hand, my little narrative above is about two rather heady, nerdy engineering types with a strong philosophical bent. People who by default dwell alone and mostly contentedly in between their own ears, probably do have this kind of outcome.

As for my children ... yeah I felt way more connected to them when they were young but it got weird when they were young adults, there's always that tension between natural affections and the need to be your own person and separate yourself and to figure out how you're going to relate to your parents at different stages of your life. Like my father before me, I'm pretty good about minding my own business and letting my adult children be their own persons, but my children don't seem to know how to take much initiative either so we tend to not interact as much as I would have imagined we would.

At this point I have my wife and stepson with me and an enjoyable professional life and it's sufficient. I think if all that ends up falling away I will be pretty content walking to the clearing at the end of the path alone, but will include people who naturally want to interact with me; I won't spurn them but I won't chase them. This seems like it strikes the right posture for me. Others will feel somewhat differently, I'm sure.

To anthropologists, belonging is the most important Human need. To psychologists, love is most important.

I have a sort of fundamental sense of belonging 'to myself' , as a child, my mother told me off about some behviour and I said "when I was a big girl you wouldnt have said that to me!" It stayed with me this see of a self that would alway have knowledge of "a before this time" of course I doubt it too but it left me with quite an impression of selfhood so I feel I belong in my skin & am not afraid of death maybe a bit bothered about the dying process but not about actual death.

Agreed..

I had the greatest sense of place, and with it came people. But my wife of seemingly forever hadn’t the same, it hadn’t been her families homestead. So when she decided to move on, instead of leaving ‘our’ magnificent place to the fifth generation, our daughters, she forced me to cash it in.

Will haunt me forever. The home, pond, orchard, gardens, trails and trees I added seemed the essence of life, to me. I’m gone, three thousand miles from what should have been the land on which I died.. But there’s more, lots more, and I’m slowly discovering it in another magnificent place. Alone, and having forgone the acres, I feel ..content.

What’s amazed, and perhaps saved me, are the people. On facebook, they now overlap. Equally wonderful, amazing and loving people, in both places. So I’m left to conclude, everywhere!

Talked with a daughter yesterday, with plans to inch my direction. Both daughters have visited, one concluding, “I see what you like about this place.” We were close, I’d been their caregiver from birth, then their teacher.. Them, and every memory of my former place, I miss. Recently it’s been tuff, though I’ve kept it to myself. Time heals, but as Paul McCartney put it, “But very slow.”

I’m beginning to wonder if the pain of loss is the price we pay for longevity? Centuries ago, I’d likely be dead by now. So perhaps humans have not developed an internal method of coping with accumulated loss. Loss in the thick of life is of course horrible ..but that slow.. nobody knows but you stuff that piles up with time. Good questions ~

I have it with both people and places. Sometimes with things.