Adaptability or validation: which makes you feel like you belong?

As the world becomes more and more connected, communication links strengthen, cultures merge, and globalization unites continents and countries. In all our diversity we are still the same — each soul restricted by the bars of its own unique flesh prison. Race, ethnicity, caste, and culture aside, we all strive for the same thing: a sense of belonging.

Since the beginning of time, humans have always lived in groups, communities, and civilizations;starting with cavemen who resided together in clans, to hunter-gatherers who foraged in clusters and industrialists who lived together in close-knit societies. Even now, in the age of technology and independence, we as humans still opt to live in bustling cities with overcrowded apartment buildings. Whether it be for work or comfort, we prefer to live in areas with a greater population density.

This is primarily because humans long for a sense of connection; our believe systems are based upon validation we receive from others, and so we feel as though living amongst others helps us feel less alone in this vast and spacious world.

In 1966, a sociologist, Santokh S. Anant, discovered that the feeling of belonging is a state of mind, needed for a person to be involved with their environment. Anant found that once a person engages with the people around them, people become more welcoming, making the person feel as though they belong with them.

However, whilst thinking about this phenomenon, a conflicting thought enters the mind. It is not people who change to welcome you into society, or make you feel as though you belong. You are the one who slowly adapts to fit into the already well-crafted model of society. It is a natural thing for people to be selfish. Others do not change who they are just to make one person feel welcome; everyone is busy, caught up in their lives. To feel as though you fit into this complex, multi- dimensional puzzle, you mold who you are, altering yourself and training the mind to feel as though it belongs with a community. The feeling of belonging develops as you become similar to others. At times, one does not even realize that they are changing themselves; it is something the mind does subconsciously to prevent them from feeling like the black sheep, helping them feel like they belong within their community.

From the time a child enters this world until they depart, the various institutions of socialization train them to fulfill tasks assigned by others. This conformity to the roles ascribed to you by society is what increases that sense of belonging, because when you are giving people what they want, they reward you with praise, further validating you and thus making you feel like you belong. In reality, you give up a piece of yourself, fulfilling others’ demands, to get validation from society and believe that the community makes you feel like you belong, when you do it yourself.