Belonging Definition Essay

The concept of belonging can have a variety of different meanings to different individuals. The Australian Oxford Dictionary defines Belonging as ‘to have an affinity with an affinity for a specified place or situation’. My personal idea of belonging is slightly different. Belonging, to me, is to know who you are, being who you want to be and being true to yourself.   Belonging is also being a member or part of a certain group or form.
One of the main aspects of belonging, I believe, is to know who you are and understanding the reason for each individual’s uniqueness. Each individual belongs to a body, a family, and a personality unique in its own right. Although, for so many individuals they can feel as though they have no place in the world and can quite often lose themselves. Through facing trials in life, such as depression, job loss, the death of a loved one, we can begin to know fully who we are and understand why we were created to be a particular way. In doing this we start to feel a strong sense of belonging not only in society, but within ourselves.
Another aspect of belonging, which closely links to the previous paragraph, is being true to yourself. As humans we are always striving to be accepted and many of us, particularly in high school, will begin showing other characteristics in an attempt to be accepted into a group. For example; in order to fit into a more popular group a person may change their appearance and personality to something completely unlike them. While the group may accept this person they are not really belonging as they are being the person that they have strived to be. This is why a person may reject a group environment as, more often than not, belonging is about how an individual sees an environment, not how the environment sees the individual.
Belonging is most commonly referred to when being a member or part of a certain group or form. As humans we have the basic need to belong to a group, tracing back to the past when...