Why is belonging so damn important?

Cultivating connection at Rooted Healing’s ‘Ancestral’ Retreat. Photo by Zsusza Zicho.

Why is it that we humans feel better when we’re a part of something? Why does familiarity give us comfort? Why do we become steeped in satisfaction when we look around the table at our oddball family during Christmas dinner? What is it about our nature that so requires this connection, this rootedness, this feeling that we’re a part of something bigger?

This is a question I have been asking myself of late. It’s not an uncommon piece to ponder (year 12 HSC flashbacks anyone?) It’s also weaved into the topic for the first moon of my Deepen Your Roots course. But even as I listened to the chapter on “Reinhabiting Place”, I asked myself – why? Why do we want…no, need to feel that we belong?

One answer that comes to mind is so that we feel less alone. If there is something, or preferably several things, that make us feel tethered then we garner this sense that we are not alone in this world, that we have friends, family, colleagues and so on who are there to lean on or lend a hand. When our human kin fail us, we can also seek solace in the more-than-human world, communing with rivers, trees, birds, dogs, insects, clouds or stars.

However, I was really stuck on the term “we are part of it and it is part of us”, and then it hit me…

Oneness. That’s the point of belonging. When we feel we belong to something, it serves as a visceral, tangible reminder of what we often forget: we are not separate beings; absolutely everything, everywhere, is connected. There are no boundaries between you, me, a chair or the ocean. This concept appears across various disciplines - including science, philosophy, ecology and spirituality – whether through quantum entanglement, the Hindu notion of Atman (self) and Brahman (universal consciousness), Africa’s Ubuntu or the vast mycelial networks underfoot.

Belonging breaks down the barriers, shattering the illusion of separation that is exceedingly ever present to the human eye. The illusion that inevitably leads to destruction, dominance, distress and division.

If I am part of it and it is part of me, then we are merged. We are one. We are home.