THE NEED TO BELONG

  Have you ever wondered why you need friends? Why you keep trying to make people like you? Why you keep searching for love even after your heart has been smashed into pieces? Have you asked yourself why you hang on to that friendship even when it’s detrimental to your health? Why you worry about the clothes you wear, the way you speak, the amount of money you have, the cars you ride, the places you go to, the job you do? Have you sat down and wondered why you care so much about what your friends, co-workers and even mere strangers say and think about you? Have you wondered why you deemed it fitting to belong to a religious inclination and go as far as to join a society in your religious group? Do you ever remember wondering how to make friends and make people like you when you were a kid or a teenager? Do you remember, taking that stick of cigarette and holding it to your lips and dragging in as your mates looked at you? Do you remember sneaking out at night to attend that party that everyone was talking about? Do you remember wearing your uniform in a certain way like
the other girls and the other guys?

  If you’ve done any of the above or more, it’s natural. You are only being human and fulfilling a human need, a primal one, a need to belong. We all want to belong somewhere. We all want to be accepted. You can’t talk about the need to belong and exclude .acceptance and rejection. No one likes to be rejected, being accepted and belonging to a group even if it just consists of two persons makes us feel good. It makes you develop a sense of accomplishment and self confidence; it builds your self esteem. There is nothing as wholesome as being loved, liked or accepted. Remember going to a party and your friends where there and you did that dance move and everyone was hailing you, calling your name, shaking your hand, that feeling you got made you feel good. It created a feel good stimulant within you, you were walking on clouds. It’s natural. Remember making your first million and the new friends you made with it, you were accepted into the boys club. That feeling you got, the accomplishment of being accepted finally. Searching for love and you found someone to share your love with, remember standing there as you said your vows, that happiness, that confidence, that feeling could not be described by you, you finally belonged somewhere. Our drive for accomplishment, for success, for self actualisation, everything is tied to our need to belong and be accepted by people, by someone. It’s a human need we all have; even the most eccentric and self-independent person amongst us inwardly has this need. We look for acceptance in different places and ways. For some it is in their professional lives for some in their personal lives, for some in their religious lives, for others in their material wealth. All these help them create and fill that need for belonging.

  With the search for acceptance can arrive the ultimate blow of rejection. Rejection is terrible. You might have been that kid no one wanted to play with, or the kid that your parents never had your time and scolded you every time, or the kid your mates treated as an outcast and called you sissy pants or chicken. Do you remember the feeling you got, watching from the sidelines, trying so hard to make them accept you and they didn’t? Maybe you were the one that placed your heart out there and loved another and wanted to be accepted and loved back but they treated your love like nothing, rejected you and broke your heart. Do you remember the feeling? You felt you were not good enough to be loved, you felt stupid, deceived and alone. Your self confidence was shaken; it dealt a blow to your esteem. Rejection can do that. It tears you down. It’s natural to feel that way. Even the most self sufficient and independent amongst us has a need to connect, to interact, to be touched, to feel wanted and loved. We all want to feel needed. No one likes rejection.
 
   Philosophers, psychologists and every wise man since the creation of the world, before the time of Christ till date have been trying to define and understand this need. Even some of these great men wanted it from someone. They needed it too. Everyone has been trying to understand this phenomenon and most basic of human psychological need and why it is so important. We all want to belong. You may think you are different and you don’t but alas you lie, you do. If you don’t why care about what people think, why bother buying the most expensive clothes, cars, toys and gadgets, houses? It’s not for your comfort, if it were, a simple shack in the woods or an iron shanty would do, then use leaves or a loin cloth to cover yourself and don’t bother going to school, don’t get married and don’t bother speaking to other humans. Ha-ha! I caught you. You can’t do that because you want to be accepted by the society, by family and others. You want to be loved, to belong. We spend our whole lives searching for acceptance, even for our kids. It’s a continuous cycle.
 
  An American psychologist who defined this need was Abraham Maslow. He believed that people are social beings who have a need to belong to a group, to love others and be loved. He further stated that if people could not meet this need of belonging, their need for self-esteem would not be satisfied. In other words without being accepted as part of a group or by others, self-esteem doesn’t develop properly.
He went further to give a ‘hierarchy of needs’ with the physiological being the first and most basic need of all. Here is the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs;

(1) Physiological (food, water, shelter, warmth);
(2) Security and safety (stability, freedom from fear);
 (3) Love and feelings of belonging (friends, family, spouse, lover);
(4) Competence, prestige, and esteem (achievement, mastery, recognition, respect);
(5) Self-fulfillment (actualization, pursue inner talent); and
(6) Curiosity and the need to understand.
  
You have to achieve number one to comfortably step into number two and from two to number three till you get to the top.
    Today, the needs can be said to be all jumbled upside down but they still exist, we want them all. Yes, some people never get to number 5 and majority never get to number 6. Well, this is a topic for another day. Number 3 is our topic of discussion today, you can see according to Dr.Maslow we need number 3 to get to number 4.
    Maybe if we all realized this need in all humans to belong and be accepted, to be liked, we’d be careful with our words and the non-acceptance. We’d not let race, religion, tribe, education ,wealth, status, age, sex and sexual preference, physical outlook etc be a deciding factor in our acceptance of others. We’d be generous in our acceptance of others because truth be told we all need acceptance, We all want to belong. We should be more accepting and treat others the way we want them to treat us.
Thank you for reading my thoughts.