What does it mean to belong?
What does it mean to belong? Sep14th ‘21
If someone asked you to make an immediate response to this question what would be your answer? On asking friends and family I am often met with hesitancy while they consider. I found a couple of books on my shelves as to what it means to belong; note the year of publication.
Concise Oxford Dictionary, Fourth Edition, OU press, pub:1964
Belong: ‘to be rightly classified as member of club, coterie, household, grade of society etc…. ‘to live here, be rightly paced under this heading’.
The Penguin A-Z Thesaurus, Penguin Books, Ltd, pub: 1986
Belong: ‘be a member, be associated with, relate to’
And then there was Google: (current)
-an affinity for a place or situation.
-belonging: A sense of fitting in […] member of a group.
Also on Google: ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, (Simple Psychology), first written in 1943 and developed on various dates up until the 60s/70s. Maslow’s response regarding the need for people to belong is high up on his five- tier system table of needs stating that: (Belonging is) ‘primal and fundamental to our sense of happiness.’
What it means to belong has been the subject of many generations of writers from across the world and across the decades. Here are a few recent examples:
‘Colour Me English’, by Caryl Phillips, (Harvil Secker, 2010)
‘A Search for Belonging’, by Michael Fuller (535 Books, 2019)
‘The Roles We Play’, by Sabba Khan, (Myriad Editions, 2021)
A couple of weeks ago I went to hear the actor David Harewood as he spoke about his recently published book: ‘Maybe I Don’t Belong Here’ (Pan Macmillan, Bluebird Books for Life, 2021) He was tenderly interviewed by historian David Olusoga at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The brave and honest account of his difficulties in navigating his way through life as a Black man in Britain was sadly all too familiar. His mental health buckled under the stress, resulting in him being twice sectioned at the age of twenty -three. Many of us in the audience nodded and sighed as his story unfolded. I left the hall in tears at the end of the evening as I suspect did many others. I read: ‘Maybe I Don’t Belong Here’ in one day. It was a painful, emotional read; a story which needed to be told, especially to those who don't consider racism, islamophobia and antisemitism to be an issue in this country.
Maslow’s work written in 1943 rings true throughout human history. Tomorrow will be September 14th. On that date in 1731, Sir Frances Child the Lord Mayor of London, made a proclamation banning London’s Black population from learning a trade. Jews were banned from this country by King Edward 1st in the 13th century and finally allowed back into England three centuries later, but antisemitism is still prevalent in the 21st century. Muslims are very often subjected to obnoxious attitudes and behaviour in our society.
A quote from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities written earlier this year: ‘In the UK, the best way to build trust is to emphasise to every ethnic group that we treat individuals fairly, and not on the basis of their ethnicity. We respect ethnic identities but also share a common, unifying, civic identity as British citizens.’ (??)
It is 2021. As we watch the news, read the newspapers and see so many vitriolic, bitter comments on social media, it is incumbent on us all to reflect on the validity of those words.
If someone asked you to make an immediate response to this question what would be your answer? On asking friends and family I am often met with hesitancy while they consider. I found a couple of books on my shelves as to what it means to belong; note the year of publication.
Concise Oxford Dictionary, Fourth Edition, OU press, pub:1964
Belong: ‘to be rightly classified as member of club, coterie, household, grade of society etc…. ‘to live here, be rightly paced under this heading’.
The Penguin A-Z Thesaurus, Penguin Books, Ltd, pub: 1986
Belong: ‘be a member, be associated with, relate to’
And then there was Google: (current)
-an affinity for a place or situation.
-belonging: A sense of fitting in […] member of a group.
Also on Google: ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, (Simple Psychology), first written in 1943 and developed on various dates up until the 60s/70s. Maslow’s response regarding the need for people to belong is high up on his five- tier system table of needs stating that: (Belonging is) ‘primal and fundamental to our sense of happiness.’
What it means to belong has been the subject of many generations of writers from across the world and across the decades. Here are a few recent examples:
‘Colour Me English’, by Caryl Phillips, (Harvil Secker, 2010)
‘A Search for Belonging’, by Michael Fuller (535 Books, 2019)
‘The Roles We Play’, by Sabba Khan, (Myriad Editions, 2021)
A couple of weeks ago I went to hear the actor David Harewood as he spoke about his recently published book: ‘Maybe I Don’t Belong Here’ (Pan Macmillan, Bluebird Books for Life, 2021) He was tenderly interviewed by historian David Olusoga at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The brave and honest account of his difficulties in navigating his way through life as a Black man in Britain was sadly all too familiar. His mental health buckled under the stress, resulting in him being twice sectioned at the age of twenty -three. Many of us in the audience nodded and sighed as his story unfolded. I left the hall in tears at the end of the evening as I suspect did many others. I read: ‘Maybe I Don’t Belong Here’ in one day. It was a painful, emotional read; a story which needed to be told, especially to those who don't consider racism, islamophobia and antisemitism to be an issue in this country.
Maslow’s work written in 1943 rings true throughout human history. Tomorrow will be September 14th. On that date in 1731, Sir Frances Child the Lord Mayor of London, made a proclamation banning London’s Black population from learning a trade. Jews were banned from this country by King Edward 1st in the 13th century and finally allowed back into England three centuries later, but antisemitism is still prevalent in the 21st century. Muslims are very often subjected to obnoxious attitudes and behaviour in our society.
A quote from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities written earlier this year: ‘In the UK, the best way to build trust is to emphasise to every ethnic group that we treat individuals fairly, and not on the basis of their ethnicity. We respect ethnic identities but also share a common, unifying, civic identity as British citizens.’ (??)
It is 2021. As we watch the news, read the newspapers and see so many vitriolic, bitter comments on social media, it is incumbent on us all to reflect on the validity of those words.
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