“We are made to belong.”- David Whyte

Whyte’s quote (above) stars in the movie plot of our lives.

Scene: California’s Warner Avenue Public School.

Time: Recess. Autumn, 1954

“Wanna go out and play?” I asked my 6^th grade friend Steve Gorman.

“Nope,” he answered. “You’re moving. I have to find new friends.”

Scene: Riverside Methodist Hospital

Time: Spring, 1995

“I guess you’re a lame duck now,” a partner at Riverside Methodist Hospital chuckled to me after my departure as CEO had been announced.

“Don’t worry,” he continued. “We’ll get by.”

Of course.

Scene: Nashville

Time: Now

My list of goodbyes continues alongside some pleasant “hellos” to new settings. And the longing to belong persists.

Every alumni association (and organization fundraiser) leverages that. Our recollections of good experience trigger desires for encores.

We were 6^th graders once. We were employed someplace else once. The pictures of us in the yearbook or hospital newsletter show us smiling at the camera next to our pals.

Because photographs trick reality, we subconsciously fall for the idea that somehow the person in the picture is permanent. That smiling “you” may seem to mock: “Ha Hah, you’re old now. You can’t play or work with me.”  

Of course, there is a far happier way to look back. It is the gift of a permanent Thanksgiving Day. Gratitude for every joyful moment. Mature appreciation for the shadowed shades in every richly lived life.

We are made to belong. We have belonged. We still do.  

-Erie Chapman

*Sunset photograph (top) by Miles Chapman