When thinking or talking about belonging we often think of it in terms of our relationships
with other humans. This is reasonable, since we ourselves are humans and our interactions or lack thereof with others of our species make up an enormous part of our life. I believe this sometimes obscures a different kind of belonging that is just as profound and important. For we belong to this planet and all the things that live beneath, within, and above it. In a larger sense we belong to the cosmos our planet inhabits. It has become cliché to say but it is a truth grounded in science that we are star stuff. Every animal and plant and stone are all made of the same exact components that we are. We have all evolved in the same place and watched the same stars move through our skies for millions of years.
When I was a little girl my very first friends were the trees in our small orchard and a horse that lived next door. There weren’t many kids that lived nearby and so before my sister was born I fell quite naturally into befriending the world around me. Bambi, my equine companion from the next yard, would stand with his head over the fence and nuzzle me with his soft brown muzzle. True, I sometimes fed him apples from the orchard, but I always believed he stayed for me and not just the apples. The trees in the orchards themselves were my friends, who showed me their own thinking in the slow, deliberate, quiet way of trees. As I got older and fell in love with science I learned that my childhood instincts were correct: I belonged with and to my non-human friends.
However different we may be as individuals, or as members of different species, there is something we all have in common because we are all children of the earth. We belong to this
earth, and to all the things that live above, upon, and beneath it. I invite you to remember this
extended family we belong to the next time you walk out or spend time with your pet.
~Hannah Thompson
