Everyone seems to be talking about loneliness and belonging these days.
Maybe we are reaching some kind of collective realisation about how disconnected we have become – and how deeply many of us are searching for belonging.
Perhaps.
But I don’t want to jump onto a trend. I arrived at these questions through my own life and experience.
Some time ago, I shared part of my story – being shy and introverted as a young boy, experiencing loneliness, finding friends and confidence through a street basketball community, moving between countries and cultures later, and searching for community and belonging.
And somehow, I ended up becoming a community builder.
The funny thing is, I’m still searching for belonging myself.
That has left me wondering:
What actually creates belonging?
Is it something “out there” – a place, community, or group we eventually find?
Does it begin within us?
Or is it both?
We often talk about a downward spiral.
When life becomes difficult, we can spiral towards isolation, disconnection, and loneliness.
But what might happen if we moved the other way?
What helps us spiral towards connection and belonging?
For me, that movement currently looks something like:
Being → Between → Beyond → Becoming
Being – Freedom to Be
Belonging begins with awareness.
Who am I? What has shaped me? What matters to me? What gifts do I bring? What helps me connect – and what sometimes gets in the way?
Of course, our identities are not created in isolation.
Family, culture, ancestry, spirituality, relationships, place, and community can all be fundamental to who we are. In many cultures, who I am cannot easily be separated from who we are.
The point isn’t endless self-analysis.
It is awareness.
Because awareness gives us greater choice about how we enter relationships – and what genuine connection and belonging might mean for us rather than simply conforming to someone else’s expectations.
Belonging isn’t fitting ourselves into somebody else’s square.
It starts with enough freedom to be; and enough awareness of our ability to connect and relate to others, if and how we wish to, as well as what might make connection difficult: fear of intimacy or rejection, difficulties with trust, past experiences of hurt or exclusion, trauma, or systemic and cultural barriers that can leave us feeling isolated or unsafe.
Between – Freedom to Connect
Then we encounter another person.
Can I remain myself while genuinely meeting you?
Can I see and be seen, listen, and be heard, encounter differences, and still remain in a relationship?
Belonging happens in this space between us.
It grows through curiosity, trust, reciprocity, vulnerability, empathy, and our capacity to meet someone whose experience may be very different from our own.
We don’t need to become the same.
Neither of us needs to disappear.
Over time, relationships develop.
We learn how to connect across difference.
Beyond – Freedom to Contribute to Community
Two people become three.
Relationships become groups, networks, and communities.
Families. Neighbourhoods. Schools. Workplaces. Cultural associations. Faith Groups. Sporting clubs. Professional networks. Places.
And place brings another dimension to belonging.
In Australia, conversations about belonging to place also sit within a much older and deeper story of Country and stolen land. Any exploration of belonging must recognise that we live and work on Aboriginal land, and that First Nations’ understandings of belonging, Country, kinship and custodianship cannot simply be folded into a western framework of belonging. This is a much deeper exploration.
Having lived, worked, and played in many different countries, this is something I want to keep learning from and exploring more deeply.
So belonging is not only about our relationships with one another, but also about our relationship with the places we inhabit, the histories they hold, and our responsibilities within them.
Belonging is about community.
Here, belonging becomes more than being welcomed.
It becomes the opportunity to be ourselves, participate, contribute and matter.
Instead of only asking:
How do we help people belong here?
We might also ask:
How can people help shape what “here” becomes?
People bring relationships, cultures, knowledge, lived experiences and expertise, passions, ideas, capacities, and gifts.
When these become connected, belonging can grow into social capital, shared purpose, and collective capacity.
Our gifts can combine with the gifts of others in service of something larger than ourselves.
A community isn’t simply somewhere we belong.
It is something we continually create together.
Becoming – Freedom to Act and Create
And then comes possibility.
What becomes possible because we are connected?
Maybe we should start something.
Have a difficult conversation differently.
Try a new role.
Create a neighbourhood initiative.
Challenge an injustice.
Exercise leadership.
Build a movement.
Experiment, fail, learn, and try again.
Belonging can become more than feeling connected.
It can give us the relationships, confidence and collective capacity to act.
And action changes us.
We discover capacities we didn’t know we had. Our identities shift. New relationships form. New possibilities emerge.
And eventually we return to Being – but not quite as the same person.
Being → Between → Beyond → Becoming → Being…
That is why I think of belonging as a spiral.
A square asks us to fit.
A circle brings us together.
A spiral brings us together while leaving room for movement, growth and change.
And of course, we don’t always move upwards.
Life happens.
We lose a job. A relationship ends. We move somewhere unfamiliar. Conflict happens. Disaster strikes. Loneliness returns.
Perhaps this is where belonging becomes more than a nice feeling.
When we spiral down, there may be someone who can sit beside us.
When disaster strikes, there may be neighbours we can call.
When we take a risk, there may be people cheering us on.
When we want to change something, there may be others willing to act alongside us.
And when we need solitude, we can return to ourselves too.
We don’t need to be connected all the time in order to belong.
Perhaps this is part of the deeper value of belonging.
It creates relational capital that we can draw upon – and contribute back to – throughout our lives.
So perhaps belonging isn’t a destination we finally reach.
It is something we continually create:
within ourselves,
between one another,
through the communities and places we shape together,
through what becomes possible when we come together to advocate, take action, and create change
and through the policies, institutions, and systems we influence and redesign.
Belonging isn’t simply where the spiral takes us.
Belonging is created through the movement.
This is still an emerging idea for me rather than a finished model.
Over the following months, I want to keep exploring it through a series of stories, encounters, games, conversations, and experiments around belonging – in myself, in relationships, in communities, and in the work I do.
Let’s see where the spiral takes us.
Stay tuned.
Soulgen 
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