There are few things as sublime as the sense of belonging. Sometimes it is a family we are born into and sometimes our lives unfold to reveal a kind of family or a tribe that is unique to our disposition. For some, like myself, these belongings are mercurial and ever changing and the flow of our lives take us on a kind of journeying. The thing about belonging I have found is there really is none - not as I imagined it, anyhow.
It has been a big issue with me all of my life, this belonging thing. I love the idea of it and I loath the practice. It is all about the understanding of what it means personally and I was very late to the contemplation of its meaning. Like love, one needs to understand it as a verb as well as a noun. Love and belonging were things that existed most of my life outside of myself and there was a kind of promise of inclusion that came with being born. Love and belonging were like a prize one receives, if not immediately then eventually, by virtue of being human and if not, there was something wrong with the person. This misunderstanding is a recipe for disaster.
As I have aged and finally allowed myself the time to consider these things philosophically, and I've realized that, in my case, I had everything backwards. Belonging begins with owning the authentic self and then cultivating a sharing of that authenticity. At least this is the way I have come to see and experience it. Finding familiar people intentionally is done through managing personal energetics to vibrate "likeness".
Hafiz writes:
I see you have the luminous afflictions
From visiting His oasis of light,
From visiting God's own private chamber.
Indeed, indeed
You are one of us.
Hafiz talks here about cultivating belonging in this poem, I think...at least it makes me think of that. We must find our own drum beat to dance to and lose our rote minds to find where we really belong in life and the people we really feel alive and connected with.
Thank you for listening.
Music: I picked this song, Hard To Find by The National primarily for the video because I often feel personally like I am stretched between my animal self and my human self. My name sounds like an animal but it is a human name suggesting music or the sky which is something ethereal or something that adjudicates or secures which is very earthly. It seems to me that how these things are alike in myself to enjoy are often difficult to delineate and, consequently, I can be hard to define or find, as the song suggests. In truth, I am all these things. I am a strange bird casting shadows and this has allowed me to belong to as assortment of tribes and families in my life.
Picture: The mythical Huma bird of Persia. It is considered to be compassionate, and a 'bird of fortune since its shadow (or touch) is said to be auspicious.
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.
My book can be purchased HERE. E-book HERE. The Season Two blogcasts with audio excerpts from my book begin HERE: in Behind The Lines. This reading of the book excerpts in a mixed media format is Season Two of this blog. These recorded excerpts are outside the chronological order in which the book was written. Podcasts with audio only beginning with episode 22 can be found HERE.
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