The Human Desire to Belong Somewhere

I think we have become very good at convincing ourselves that we don’t need anyone. We learn to enjoy our own company, make our own money, solve our own problems and build a life that doesn’t depend on someone else being around to make it feel complete, and honestly, I think there is something beautiful about that. I like knowing that I can take myself out, spend an evening alone and go home without feeling like something is missing. I like having a life that belongs to me. Yet there are still those days when something happens, and the first thought is that I wish I had someone to tell. Not someone who could fix it or give me some profound advice, just someone who would understand why it mattered to me. That is the part of being independent I find difficult to explain. I can be completely fine on my own and still want somebody beside me.

I don’t think those two things contradict each other as much as we make them seem. Being able to live alone doesn’t mean wanting to live without people. Being capable of handling your own problems doesn’t mean you never want comfort. I can know that I would survive if someone walked out of my life and still hope they never do. I can love having my own space and still want certain people to know where I am, what I am doing and how my day went. There is a difference between needing someone to function and wanting someone to share your life with, and I think we sometimes confuse the two because admitting that we want people feels a little more vulnerable than admitting that we don’t.

I have always found that strange. We are so comfortable talking about independence. We celebrate the person who can do everything alone, who doesn’t ask for help, who doesn’t need reassurance, who can leave without looking back. We rarely talk about how nice it is to have someone you don’t have to be so independent around. Someone with whom there is no performance involved, where a bad day doesn’t have to become a funny story and silence doesn’t have to be filled. I think that kind of comfort is one of the things people spend years looking for without always knowing that this is what they are looking for.

Because when I say I want to belong somewhere, I don’t think I mean that I need a crowd around me. I think I mean that I want a few people in whose lives my presence has become ordinary or a routine. I want the sort of closeness where nobody has to wonder whether they are still wanted after a difficult conversation or a strange week. I want to be able to disappear into my own life for a while and come back without feeling as though I have lost my place. There is a particular comfort in knowing that a relationship can survive your absence for a little while.

I think that is also why being left out can hurt more than we like to admit. It is the realization that a life you thought you had a place in has continued without needing you there. That can make a person question far more than one friendship or one evening. It can make you wonder whether you were ever as important to someone as they were to you, and I don’t think there is an easy answer to that question once it gets into your head.

Maybe this is why we keep looking for somewhere to belong. We want to find people around whom we don’t have to constantly wonder where we stand. We want relationships that don’t make us feel as though affection has to be earned again every morning. We want to know that if life gets messy and we become less fun to be around for a while, the door doesn’t immediately close.

One of my subscriber writers, Shahid Hussain Nowshad, wrote about this from a completely different experience. Growing up in Singapore, he describes feeling like an outsider within several layers of identity, including within his own family, and that experience seems to have shaped the way he has moved through the world ever since. He eventually moved from Singapore to Austin and then New York, always searching for a life that felt more aligned with who he was.

Shahid Hussain’s ESSAY:

In Singapore, my beloved country of birth, from the second I was born, demographically I was a minority within a minority within a minority. As a child, having to regularly explain parts of my existence – perhaps why I didn’t speak a certain language (“Oh, you’re Indian but you don’t speak Tamil??”), why I had certain dietary restrictions (“You ‘eat halal’ ah? But you don’t look Malay”) – got really tiresome after a while.

And even with my family, which on paper was supposed to be the best fit for me, something didn’t sit right. There was always some dissonance: they felt, in ways I couldn’t articulate as a child, too conservative and too insular relative to how I was already starting to see the world.

In that way, the psychological and emotional texture of my childhood was difficult (though I of course was extremely privileged in many other ways). And it continues to inform how I live in the world. What has always been true (subconsciously – and has started to become consciously clear to me only recently) is that a core part of my self-conception is that of an outsider, a wanderer, someone who always has to work a little bit harder to fit in.

It’s the bittersweet cost of my life, for it has also blessed me with a deep sense of curiosity, adventure, always searching for the next frontier. For if my present surroundings don’t fully accept me, why not see what else is out there? For me, home at the moment feels like it’s not really about a place or a people; rather, it becomes something closer to a spirit, an energy.

My entire life is a testament to that questing spirit. Every time I’ve moved (first from Singapore to Austin, and then to New York City) has been a search for better alignment; a bargain, discarding comfort and familiarity at the behest of a quiet whisper from my soul that says “there’s something else out there for you”. And it’s telling that in many ways I feel more at home in the US than in Singapore, especially in New York. More than anywhere else, New York celebrates individual flourishing. There’s a true plurality of values, a plurality of ways to live a good life, and everyone gets to try. That spirit of trying, of listening intently to the whisper, is closer to home for me than anything else.

There are certainly times where I wonder if what I call questing is just a more flattering word for running from something. Curiosity can be a way of engaging with life more fully, and it can also be a way of never having to sit still long enough to feel something uncomfortable.

But on balance, I take real pride in the cultural versatility that my inner wanderer has taught me. He’s led me to constantly wonder about contexts outside of my own. I’ve solo traveled a fair amount; can say at least “hi’, “bye”, and “thank you” in about ten languages; and am completely undaunted by the prospect of traveling anywhere in the world and trying to learn the context. Everywhere I’ve landed, I’ve constructed my little version of home – and in that spirit itself, that curiosity and adaptability, lies my sense of home.

Questing is in my blood. My father, first in his family to go to college, moved to Singapore and built a successful company from scratch. Decades before that, my mother’s father got on a ship after fighting with his family, ended up in Singapore, and rebuilt his life from scratch, becoming a businessman and community leader. My entire existence is a testament to courage and wonderment. How could I even consider being a coward? Who the fuck am I to not live up to that legacy of trying?

I certainly yearn for regular community, for stability, to be able to stop wandering. But I know I just don’t have it in me to construct those things artificially, out of fear or scarcity. I can’t settle. I’ll only ever choose a home out of love and abundance – and I’m deeply grateful that, in the present, I have friends and family and a partner who love and support me, even if my choices seem illegible to them sometimes.

Home is a spirit of openness, of refusing the mold. I’ll take joy and pride in the wandering for as long as it asks of me – and maybe someday, feel settled enough to slow down.

What I found interesting about Shahid’s piece is that his relationship with belonging doesn’t seem to depend on finding one place and deciding that he will never leave it. He has found a certain freedom in being able to move, learn new contexts and build a sense of home wherever he goes. His restlessness is part of his identity, and I think there is something honest about accepting that rather than forcing yourself into a life simply because it looks settled from the outside.

At the same time, his writing about wanting community and stability stayed in my mind, because I think that desire exists even in people who love being independent. We can want freedom without wanting isolation. We can enjoy moving through life on our own terms while still hoping that there are people waiting for us somewhere.

I think that is where belonging gets complicated. We want people, but we don’t want to lose ourselves inside them. We want to be loved, but we don’t want our entire sense of worth to depend on being loved. We want a home, but we don’t want the walls of that home to become the limits of our life.

For a long time, I thought being independent meant reaching a point where I wouldn’t really need anyone anymore. I don’t think I believe that now. I still want to be able to stand on my own. I still want my own money, my own interests, my own friendships and a life that would continue even if the people around me changed. I just don’t see why any of that has to mean pretending that I don’t want anyone.

There are days when being alone feels wonderful, and there are days when I would give almost anything for someone familiar to sit beside me. I don’t think one feeling makes the other less true.

Perhaps that is what I like about the idea of belonging now. It doesn’t have to mean finding one perfect place where every part of me fits forever. It can simply mean having people with whom I don’t feel like I have to earn my place every day. It can mean being known well enough that a quiet week doesn’t threaten the relationship, or being able to change without everyone deciding that the person they loved has disappeared.

I don’t want to become someone who needs nobody. I don’t think that would actually feel like freedom to me. I think I would rather become someone who can take care of himself and still have people he is deeply grateful for, someone who can leave when leaving is necessary and still have a few places he would hate to leave behind.

Because perhaps the human desire to belong isn’t really about weakness at all. Perhaps it comes from knowing that a life can be entirely your own and still be better when there are people you get to share it with.

Co-Author Substack ID: Shahid Hussain Nowshad