Longing for Belonging

We tend to be quite committed to categorizing our lives, others, and ourselves into tidy illusory boxes. Seasons rotate in the mind as winter, spring, summer, and fall. We live within our dichotomizations of approval or disapproval. We claim right or wrong, good or bad, and left or right.

Certainly, our categorical shortcuts give us a necessary vantage point to navigate our days. But when our worlds exist only in this limited way, our minds and bodies contract. In our contraction, judgement works overtime to keep up the whole illusion. Eventually, an over-commitment to looking out at the world through a categorical lens leads us to a longing for a more spacious existence- a longing for belonging in connectedness. We long to belong in the space between right and wrong, good and bad, left and right. We long to exist with the wider palette of colours between hazy August evenings and crisp September mornings that call toward an autumn equinox. Seeing through the illusory perspective of separateness, the subtleties in the space between winter, spring, summer, and fall are their very own stage. 

With a widening view, wisdom reminds us that our neighbours are beyond our language of right or wrong, good or bad, and left or right. As our judgement fatigues and surrenders, we look and see through the whole illusion, and we are reminded of the complexity of human nature, of our shared vulnerability, and of our compassion. In being with the fullness of our longing heart, we are guided back home to the space between our categories, where we find ourselves belonging to it all.