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I was in the airport waiting to return home from a family visit for the holidays. Two women, just behind me, were having a lively conversation in another language that I recognized as familiar to me. I kept thinking to myself, "Are they speaking Assyrian, the language of my heritage, or Hebrew?" To know for sure, I politely asked.
"Excuse me, are you speaking Assyrian?" "No, Hebrew," the younger woman replied. Explaining why I was eavesdropping, I said, "I'm Assyrian, and our languages are both Aramaic, so they sounded so alike to me." "I know," she said with kind and certain acknowledgment of both of our ancient, Aramaic roots. She then relayed the story to her mother in Hebrew who was visiting the United States to celebrate her 84th birthday with her daughter. She smiled lovingly back to me, and we wished each other a blessed new year.
I'm sharing this story to say that there was something so comforting to me to hear language that was distinctly of Aramaic origin. I was drawn so completely into the women’s beautiful melody of sounds, as if I was trying hard to recall something very meaningful to me from long ago. I know you know the feeling too. The sense of belongingness and intimate feeling you get when family and relatives chat in their native tongue.
To Belong
To belong is vital to our well-being. The first psychologist who spoke about the importance of belonging was psychologist Henry Murray (1938). He identified three-core psychological needs (need for achievement, power and affiliation) that form the basis of our motivations and well being. Psychologist David McClelland, strongly influenced by Murray’s work, popularized the term need for affiliation that emphasized the necessity of human beings to belong and be involved, if they are to thrive. (1938). Personality theorist Alfred Adler, founder of the Adlerian approach to human development and psychotherapy, based his entire personality theory on the understanding that our individual well being is inextricably interwoven with the groups to which we belong.
Connection to family, friends and society at large makes us feel a part of something important and larger than self that forms our identity and positively affects our physical and mental health. Belonging is imperative to our survival. In less civilized times, people literally could not survive without a group to shelter and protect them. Consider the terrorist groups of today. Groups like Isis, for example, have flourished on the loneliness and separation of social misfits who lack meaningful, life-affirming connections to people. Affiliation with these types of groups promises a feeling of belongingness, power and achievement.
The research supporting the value of belongingness in our personal lives is far too vast to cite here. But, there’s no doubt about it, belongingness is vital to our well-being and survival.
A Need to Belong to Each Other
I pose today a core human need that is greater than the need to connect solely to people and groups based on the inclusion of some and exclusion of others. We have a spiritual need to belong to each other, no matter our race, culture, religion or country. I thought about the conversation I had with the two women in the airport for some time after. As psychologists do, I reflected upon my need to speak to them. Most obviously, I wanted to know the language they were speaking. But, I also knew something more important was going on inside of me. I wanted to connect to them on a spiritual level that rises above race, religion, nationality, and philosophical differences. My reaching out was more to say, “I’m curious about you”; “I want to know you.” It was really less about the sharing of our Aramaic roots and more my spiritual need to say – we belong to each other because we are human beings struggling to be understood, respected, connected and to make a meaningful and fulfilling life.
I want to share with you a comment made by my friend and Anthropologist Jack L. Amsell , with regard to the story I shared here today.
“Anthropology makes a clear distinction between race, which is a physical study, and ethnicity, which is a cultural study. To anthropologists there is no human race. There is only a human species. Therefore, a race denotes physical distinctions. So, physically, we are one, but we have some physical differences. More importantly, it matters not what we look like. We can believe the same things or different things, regardless of how we look. Likewise, we can speak with different voices no matter what we look like or whatever we believe. Your story makes that abundantly clear.”
I thank Jack for sharing with me this anthropological understanding of our oneness. We have numerous chances to connect with people who may look, talk, feel and believe differently than us. We have abundant chances to feel one with each other and the world at large. We just need to be mindful of our spiritual need to belong to each other.
A Consciousness of Belonging to Each Other
Go into 2016 with a consciousness of belonging to each other, no matter differences in our look, talk, feelings and beliefs. One of the most valuable understandings I’ve grasped from followers of my blog Psychology in Everyday Life (http://www.psychologyineverydaylife.net) is that people all over the world want to connect to each other in a meaningful and fulfilling way, no matter their race, culture or religion.
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Happy New Year, Have a healthy and prosperous 2016. Dr. Deborah
