Where do we belong?
Photo credit: Booker T. Sessoms 2022
I painted my toenails just before we left Brooklyn in mid-September. I have cut my nails several times since then and the remaining varnish is all but peeled off, but I still can’t quite make myself remove the last bits. Every day I look at my partially painted toenails and know that some of me still belongs to Brooklyn.
If pressed, I would say that I believe belonging is a human condition, not about specific places or land. We belong to each other and ourselves. It is in our love — friendships, coworkers, comrades in this work we get to carry out — that we find true homes.
And yet. Land is important. Our loves need context, to grow we must root down first. But just like humans, the earth belongs to itself. None of us can own the land anymore than we can own each other. True transformation exists not in claiming land as a possession, but in inhabiting it as a home we relate to and (crucially) share.
In my ancestral tradition, the European commons were where communities gathered firewood, leafy greens, berries, and root vegetables. It’s where we came together to rest, celebrate, and grieve. Now, our commons are less grounded yet equally necessary and concrete: public transportation, systems for health and sanitation, education, housing we can afford. All of these require sharing. It requires us to know the earth belongs to itself and all who exist with it, equally.
I think about this as I sit in silence this morning, intermittently wiggling my blue-nailed toes. The land my rented apartment is on is privately owned and guarded with locks and heavy doors. I know my sense of safety is partially linked to those locks: this space is safe because I guard it and my possessions within it. I shake my head in frustration. Private ownership of the earth and all it contains is what leads to violence. None of us needs to hoard to exist.
My meditation teacher always says, the conditions for happiness are present right now. I return to that mantra as the one thing I can truly know. Breathing in, I am grateful for my body. Breathing out, I ease into its care.
