I was talking with a friend about life. We started touching on the idea of setting down roots, committing to a location, a job, a pursuit, and it got me thinking quite hard. I do that sometimes with things that seem too simple.
What it all comes down to is belonging. That condition, that state of mind that lets you be at peace as a human being. I made a web diagram delineating what I think makes up this condition. I could spend a lot of time trying to crystallize it in a dignified away that's articulate and acceptable to other minds, in clear and understandable terms, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm just going to put it all down in some fashion and, well, you can read it and let me know if it makes sense. If it doesn't make sense... I don't want to know.
Belonging - rather than a feeling, an emotional condition
Ownership - is the truth of Belonging
made up by:
Means - by this I mean a feeling. these feelings are the MEANS of asscertaining the Truth.
Commitment - a bond of will. not of paper or necessity.
Love
Need - a part of what might be called one's niche. this is specifically the feeling one has that he or she is integral to the system around him or her.
Agents - now these are the (more or less) physical elements (AGENTS) which lead to the feelings which ascertain the Truth of the conditon.
Property - this is significant. not mundane. this is the land, the habitation, the car, the investment that one has made in one's future. As referred to in the rough draft of the Dec. of Ind., right?
Purpose - this is the other part of the niche. rather than a feeling of need this is the actual job there is to do and the fruit that will come of it.
Protection - I suppose one can't feel they belong anywhere without some manner of security.
Here's a sort of auxiliary bit that I struggle to wrap my head around:
Possessions - now this contra to Property is the mundane. This is where Belonging and Possession collide in a weird way. I hear all sorts of people cry out that our culture is falling away from meaningful and wholesome relationship. More than previous cultures? probably not, but falling away still. Can materialism be see as an attempt to engage in this process of taking ownership and belonging to something. Are my unhealthy spending habits which occurred months ago to be attributed to my own feeling of dys-belonging. If so, would it be any surprise that, as people take to the internet more and more, and venture out amongst the world in their physical bodies less and less, we would see the resultant lack of belonging manifest in greater and greater online sales and a thriving E-conomy?
I feel that this all has obvious theological implications. I hesitate to make them, because my brain is tired. Perhaps I'll make another post on it this Spring. :)
