Quotes About Belonging

The number of secrets I receive is in inverse proportion to the number of secrets anyone expects me to have of my own. And this is the real source of my dismay. Being told secrets is not - never has been - a sign that I belong or that I matter. It is quite the opposite: confirmation of my irrelevance.

It's not prettier or better than other places and it sure a shell isn't an easy place, but I know how to live here. And that counts.

Sometimes we want to unbelong as much as we want to belong.

It seemed that acquiring a house was not the same thing as acquiring a home. And connected to home was a question I swatted away every time it landed too near me. Who else was living with me in the grand old house with the pomegranate tree? Was I alone with the melancholy fountain for company? No. There was definitely someone else there with me, perhaps even cooling their feet in that fountain. Who was this person? A phantom.

The house with the pomegranate tree was my major acquisition. In this sense, I owned some unreal estate. The odd thing was that every time I tried to see myself inside this grand old house, I felt sad. It was as if the search for home was the point, and now that I had acquired it and the chase was over, there were no more branches to put in the fire.

I wasn't sure my skeletal system had found a way of walking freely in the Societal System

I felt at ease with myself, which must have meant that she did not regard me as strange and so I had no reason to imitate someone who was less strange and had been saved from doing the chameleon thing.

To not feel at home in her family home is the beginning of the bigger story of society and its female discontents.

She wasn't sure who were family & who were friends, and maybe they all were both, and maybe it didn't matter one bit.

Having a sense of place may by now require a continual act of imagination.

Maybe most of all, Karl is like family because of how I feel when I'm around him: completely and unself-consciously myself.

Knowing that somewhere in the world there is someone who cares what you wore, an insignificant detail of your life that would seem unimportant to anyone else, makes you feel more connected to that person and less alone in the world.

Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try.

Manusia memang seolah didesain untuk menunaikan satu misi, yakni mencari tahu asal-usul mereka, demi kembali merasakan keutuhan itu, yang niscaya akan membuat mereka berhenti merasa kecil dan teralienasi di tengah megahnya jagat raya.

If more people understood how nice it is to have a sense of home that extends past our locked doors, past our neighbors' padlocks, to the local food co-op and library, the sidewalks busted up by old trees - if we all held home with longer arms - we'd live in a very different place.

Giving connects two people, the giver and the receiver, and this connection gives birth to a new sense of belonging.

Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it is like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is-my own true self. I will notice those moments of intimacy with myself, when I feel that "I am" is enough to sustain me forever. I will lie on the grass at one with nature, expanding until my being fades into the infinite.

Tradition makes people want to cling to their identity. Change is the enemy.

There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.

Know that you have a center. Know that you belong there. Know that the path to the center takes no effort.

Everyone needs to feel safe and secure. Everyone needs to feel nurtured. Everyone needs to feel loved and appreciated. Everyone needs to feel that their life is relevant and meaningful.

The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I'm not part of it.

All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.

México no es el país de Andrés Manuel López Obrador o Enrique Peña Nieto o Carlos Slim o Emilio Azcárraga o Carlos Romero Deschamps o Elba Esther Gordillo o Felipe Calderón. No es el país de los diputados o los gobernadores o los burócratas o los líderes sindicales o los monopolistas. Es el país de uno. El país nuestro. Ahora y siempre.