Belonging

[Excerpt from Opening of TEDx UWCSEAEast 18 March ; theme of Belonging]

Belonging.

….It’s hard to pin down exactly what it means, but we probably all know what it feels like when we feel that we belong; either at home with family, out with friends or at school… It can happen anywhere. That feeling that we can just be ourselves and be accepted and valued for who we are is a precious one and the foundation of contentment and happiness. And we probably know, equally well, the painful feeling of not belonging.

I think we all want to feel like we belong; we also want to help other people feel that they belong too. And that’s part of the reason for this being the theme of this TEDx, to understand the idea better, more deeply. Especially as we slowly emerge from a very difficult two years where connections have been harder to make, belonging deserves our attention. We need to grasp what it really means to belong, why it’s important and how to get there.

I’ve been wondering though, if the right way to think about Belonging is actually not as a thing to define and capture, but to seek through other things. I’m wondering if belonging is like grace in a dance. It doesn’t make sense to talk about grace as separate from the dance, because grace doesn’t exist on its own. Grace is not something the dancer feels at the end of a dance, but an intrinsic accompaniment of that dance done well. I’m wondering if the same goes for Belonging in daily life – you don’t live your life and somehow add a dose of Belonging to it – it’s not a separate thing that we can pursue, but something that arises from what psychologist Martin Seligmann calls ‘good traffic’ with the world. That is, belonging emerges from a life well-lived.

If that’s right, it means that we shouldn’t chase belonging as a thing – we should just understand how to spend our days in ways that mean it will emerge naturally. Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne said when it comes, it comes incidentally – make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krisha tells student Arjuna much the same thing – Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward.

Underlying both these examples if the hard truth that if you’re paying all your attention looking for love, then you probably aren’t paying enough attention to the things that will make you loveable. Same with belonging. But still, we can learn from each other, and so it is wonderful that today we will hear from our speakers today about experiences that have generated Belonging for them. I know it’s going to be a great afternoon, and by the end we will surely all end up feeling that we belong a little more. So welcome everyone, to TEDx East 2022!