Belonging

Borges wrote that one does not belong to a country or a nation. One belongs to their neighbours, their friends, their family. I cannot remember where he said this or how he said it. I’ve tried finding the reference, and I encountered no luck. Borges would have said that, nonetheless. From all the people I’ve read, he would be the one best suited to have said it.

But what is belonging? Belonging to a community, to an idea(l), to certain savoir-faire(s), to a place, to people? Is belonging possession? Of a house, which turns into a home when we put our mind and spirit into making it such? Is belonging the ownership of our body, our other home – and perhaps our only home? Belonging, thus, to ourselves, to the identity we define for ourselves, or, perhaps more accurately, the identity that gets modified by circumstances of a life we can never take for granted?

Is it possible that for some people, it is all down to genetics, so they will never feel they belong no matter what? Scientists and other experts will be better placed to respond to these questions.

Nonetheless, my intuition suggests that belonging must have something to do with feeling present; feeling at ease and in peace wherever one is. Feeling that there is nowhere else one would rather be: not dreaming the future or lamenting the past. Just being where one is, with – at least, temporarily – a lack of desire for anything beyond the present tense. Whatever – whoever – is what makes the rest of the world an insignificant matter, that must be where one belongs.

Writing is one of those places free of the longing for belonging; where there is no pain for any losses, and where one feels in community with the Other, the Reader. But does one belong to the readers or to the letters one mutters? Is a home such because one inhabits it or because of all the books with their voices silently filling it?

Isn’t there a question we’re avoiding? And why is it that the issue at stake is: will one ever feel at home?