Belonging

Belonging: the state of being comfortable and accepted in a place or community.

Why do we strive to belong? It's like being in the mountains and calling out just to hear the sound come back to you. Landscape and nature knows us, and it's returning echo seems to confirm that we belong here .Hunger to belong is human nature. Being cut off from others, we would turn in on ourselves. We don't make an issue about belonging. But when we belong, we take it for granted. Every one if us walks alone in this world, and it's in our nature to seek out belonging. Each of us carries a unique world in our hearts. Every soul is a different shape. No one feels your life like you do, no one will experience things the way you do. Only you know your own story. The world is surrounded with beauty. Landscapes, oceans art, and music. Although there is no where that we feel so deeply encountered as we do in the presence of another human being. The human body is temple of sensuous spirit. Every moment, in one way or another our senses reach out in longing to be with the world. Color shape and movement meets the affections of the eyes; tone sound and silence call continually to our hearing. Touch fragrance and taste brings us closer with the intimacy of the world. As long as we can live in this temple of the senses, longing will forever call to us.

In Greek mythology the theme of longing and belonging are expressed in the story of Echo. The nymph called Echo could only use her voice in repetition of another. Echo one day fell in love with the beautiful Narcissus. She follows him as he goes hunting with friends and although she longs to call for him she cannot do so, for she cannot speak first. Her chance comes, when Narcissus is separated from his friends, he calls and Echo takes this opportunity to speak by repeating his words back to him. This is when he calls for his friends " Let us come together here" Echo misunderstands and rushes to embrace him, revealing herself. Narcissus brutally rejects her and she is doomed to spend the rest of her life anxious in longing for him.
Narcissus, finally sees his beauty in his reflection in a pool and falls in love with himself. This love is torture for him, to fall in love with himself he is caught in the unbearable contradiction. He is both the lover and the beloved in a single body. Unable to endure the torment that is its own object and can never posses its self, breaks the circle by killing himself.
In the wisdom of Greek mythology, it is no accident that Narcissus and Echo were paired. Its as if she knows the deathly symmetry of Narcissus's self obession The irony is that he will have to reject himself as well. It tells us that because of Echo's nature her fate is twined to his. She's vulnerable because she cannot speak first. Her name and nature are the same. She longs for him and is doomed to a life of demented longing and she becomes, a little more that a lonely desperate voice.
It has taken me some time to put my words in their rightful place. I can only hope my words have made sense and you can take some of what I have said with you on your journeys