The second question that strangers usually ask other strangers is "Where are you from?" or "From where do you belong?". Very apt. The key to being human is "to belong" to something. At a basic level, we belong to a family and have friends. We belong to a place or a home or an environment. At a later stage, we belong to an organisation and a society and clubs. When none of these physical things are no longer there and to still be sane and be human, we associate ourselves with God and consider belong to him. Religion and faith is the last saviour of connecting us to something for our need to belong.
This belonging helps us understand and relate to many things. For one thing, we are not all cannibals because almost all religions and most countries teach the people to be belonging to the category "human" or "people".
Can a human be totally alone and not belong to anything? I think the person cannot be very sane doing this for long.
Just belonging to something for the sake of it is of no use. The "belonging" should be engaging, else it is of no use. We maybe an alumni of a school, but if we truly dont engage this relationship/belonging atleast mentally or emotionally, if not anything tangibly, we really are not belonging to it.
If you truly want to belong to something, it must be engaging you continously, else the belonging or the relationship fades.
Belonging is such a basic need of a human and possibly why people miss their loved ones so much after they are gone. Yet, they engage with the lost ones in their minds continously and find it so hard to disengage with them. Possibly why, people are scared to get out of bad relationships as they will no longer belong to someone.
"The need to belong" could possibly explain a lot of our human behaviours - why we act and do the way do.
