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Idea: Streams of consciousness from four people, each representing four views of belonging, interconnected. o Scene I: “The calling”  First person: based off everyone • Context: at school, superficial friends • Perspective-Concept: Represents the initial stage; a desire to seek genuine/true satisfaction → true belonging does not mean physical belonging etc.. Random stuff about friendship. Rah rah. • Conclude: Wishes to escape from the institutionalized world → rite of passage. o Scene II: “The getting of wisdom”  Second person: based off McCandless- ITW • Context: returned to society, after isolation/exploration. • Perspective-Concept: Represents the need for relationship and acceptance to truly belong; Only when you truly belong can you find joy o Went solo to seek belonging and true joy; only came when he met lady friend. But she dead :(. Happiness only real when shared. • Conclude: Admires the couple in the bar o Scene III: “sharons silly”  Third people: (can do one para or two/for each person). A couple. • Context: a couple, one cherishes love, one doesn't feel true belonging/ a desire for fulfillment/ spiritual satisfaction? • Perspective-Concept: Emotional belonging which is ostensibly “ultimate/perfect” belonging. Desire for an even greater fulfillment. • Conclude: Gives up. Acknowledge need for true spiritual satisfaction but says ceebs. “at least i'm not like that bartender thats alone”- still treasures emotional belonging. o Scene IV: “Surprised by Joy”  Fourth person: based on • Context: spiritually satisfied – Christian (but not explicitly stated). • Perspective-Concept: Spiritual fulfillment- true and lasting joy; the importance and inevitibility of a desire for genuine acceptance. • Conclude. Quotes

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Intro o Basic scene: A bar #1 – Group of friends o One friend- alienated though belonged physically: envied observer. o Others- natural belonging- values, race etc

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In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company." In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing That is why those pathetic people who simply “want friends” can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question “Do you see the same truth?” would be “I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend,” no Friendship can arise— though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers. In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about anyone else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history. Of course you will get to know about most of these in the end. But casually. They will come out bit by bit, to furnish an illustration or an analogy, to serve as pegs for an anecdote; never for their own sake. That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts. This love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and connections. At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague or subordinate. Not among our Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. Hence (if you will not misunderstand me) the exquisite arbitrariness and irresponsibility of this love. I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity.

#2 - Loner o Not belonging | Pulled a McCandless;  Sought independence from school.  Leave the tedious and absurd duty from graduating, and was finally emancipated form that world of abstraction, false security, material excess, things that I thought cut me off from the truth of my existence.  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an

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animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable  No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. o Observes couple. o I longed for activity, instead of an even flow of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to renounce self for the sake of my love. I was conscious of a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. I had bouts of depression, which I tried to hide, as something to be ashamed of… My mind, even my senses were occupied, but there was another feeling – the feeling of youth and a craving for activity – which found no scope in our quiet life…So time went by, the snow piled higher and higher round the house, and there we remained together, always and forever alone and just the same in each other’s eyes; while somewhere far away amidst glitter and noise multitudes of people thrilled, suffered and rejoiced, without one thought of us and our existence which was ebbing away. Worst of all, I felt that every day that passed riveted another link to the chain of habit which was binding our life into a fixed shape, that our emotions, ceasing to be spontaneous, were being subordinated to the even, passionless flow of time… ‘It’s all very well … ‘ I thought, ‘it’s all very well to do good and lead upright lives, as he says, but we’ll have plenty of time for that later, and there are other things for which the time is now or never.’ I wanted, not what I had got, but a life of challenge; I wanted feeling to guide us in life, and not life to guide us in feeling. o Ugly duckling- not freakshow ugly, just homely. Had a friend who was ugly too. But his friend turned out ot be a swan. o Needs true acceptance from other.  Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling... Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from "being in love" — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God... "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it  Happiness only real when shared. #3 - Couple o 1: Emotional belonging  Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.  It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection

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proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.  “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” o 2: Belongs emotionally but has desire for more  Criticizes bartender.  Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all  Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one. We can imagine that among those early hunters and warriors single individuals—one in a century? one in a thousand years?—saw what others did not; saw that the deer was beautiful as well as edible, that hunting was fun as well as necessary, dreamed that his gods might be not only powerful but holy. But as long as each of these percipient persons dies without finding a kindred soul, nothing (I suspect) will come of it; art or sport or spiritual religion will not be born. It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision—it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude. Lovers seek for privacy. Friends find this solitude about them, this barrier between them and the herd, whether they want it or not. They would be glad to reduce it. The first two would be glad to find a third. Hence we picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead."  Life—natural life—has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?  This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again....God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. #4 - Bartender o Spiritual belonging o Disregard others o Joyful, satisfaction  not an impersonal thing nor a static thing — not even just one person — but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance … (The) pattern of this three-personal life is … the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality.

God designed the human machine to run on Himself. Peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing. The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."  If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  You catch and save every tear I cry You journal everyday all about my life Your love for me reaches to the sky I am Yours, You are mine   

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Belonging is the concept that deals with the instinctive and fundamental human need or desire to feel a sense of security or acceptance. One’s perception of belonging is intrinsic to oneself, evolutionary in nature, shaped by a myriad of contexts and it is this complexity of the transformative and paradoxical nature of belonging that is the thematic focus of Peter Skrzynecki’s Immigrant Chronicles and further accentuated in Sean Penn’s movie Into The Wild [2007]. These texts explore the instinctive yearning for true acceptance; however, more importantly stress the ambivalent nature of belonging and its necessity in order to be truly satisfied.