Food Or Belonging: What Is More Important?

Who do we belong to first?  Ourselves?  Our mothers, fathers, caregivers?  It’s hard to say because whoever first takes care of our food needs, we will belong to, right?  Well, think again!

Harry Harlow, an American psychologist conducted experiments between 1957 and 1963 with baby Rhesus monkeys.  Soon after birth he separated the baby monkeys from their mothers and then presented them with a choice of two surrogate mothers.  One was a bare-wire structure with a food tube and the other was a soft wool-covered structure.  Overwhelmingly, the baby monkeys spent their time with the soft touch mother structure.  Now, they did go to the bare-wire structure mom to get food from her food tube but quickly returned to the structure that provided physical softness.  Did these baby monkeys feel a sense of belonging, though?  I propose that they did and that the need for belonging is as fundamental as the need for food.  I don’t believe that baby human needs are significantly different.  In fact, I believe that our need for belonging is so deep that we are born with it as an instinct and it then grows into a thought-rooted feeling.

I propose that belonging is an intrinsic part of our psychological as well as physiological health and thus an intrinsic part of all of Maslow’s need stages.  How else can we explain that people who are in the self-actualization stage may choose pain and suffering?  One reason might be the need to belong.  Whether it is to a person or an idea.  I believe that the decision is informed by the knowledge that they can calmly rest in themselves without need of approval by everyone.  I suggest that it is this comprehension of self-belonging that empowers them to choose to belong to an idea.  These individuals have psychologically matured so deeply that they can truly exercise their free will, like choosing the satisfaction that comes from belonging over other needs.

Of course, many of us exist in various degrees of psychological maturity regarding self-actualization as well as belonging.  And so, in order to end on a lighter note, please consider this.  The next time you feel the sting of not belonging take comfort in the thought that overcoming this disappointment is truly very difficult because we are hardwired with a need to belong first. 

Then I suggest that you go eat a good meal at your favorite restaurant.  You just might belong there!