Maybe we are hard wired to want to belong. To be in a group. I imagine the comfort early humans would feel when being accepted into a group of others, no longer terrified and alone, wandering as prey from another. There must have been a mental schism in the evolving primates who walked, possibly for the first time, away from the security of their tribe. Maybe they chose to leave, maybe they were forced because they were different. Either way, the community they knew was gone, and they had to learn a new way. Alone.
Is that why we cling to things that poison us? People who claim to be friends, leaders who lie, family that destroys. Is there some deep hidden part that longs to be “in” rather than not? There has to be. A primate seed that remembers something about belonging that died long ago. It searches still, clinging to vines and ashes without knowing which is of use, and which is lost.
Does this fear, loss, drive us to cling to anyone or thing that even remotely resembles that feeling of belonging? Sacrifice everything just to escape that first moment we stepped down from the trees and walked away into the unknown. But it’s still there. The fear of not finding, the fear of losing, driven by fear, and afraid any change away will be the last one. Forever wandering. Never belong again.