Anam Cara

Styles of Belonging

We have suggested that the sense of belonging ultimately derives from place and persons. Landscape provides location; this makes it possible to know and approach things and persons. If there were no place, there could be no thing. Family sets the focus of belonging during our first longings. We also suggested that the human body is the house of belonging; it is where we live while we are here. If there were no longing in us, we could subsist in listless indifference. We could be neutral about everything. Because we are always in different states and stages of longing, the ways we belong in the world are always diverse and ever changing. From the ways that longing and belonging criss-cross each other we can identify different styles of belonging. Some continue to belong in the place they arrived on the first journey.