[My] Research Shows What We Long For Most

Again and again, I find that what people are longing for most during this time of change and uncertainty is not what you might expect to rise to the top of the list.

Not safety. Not financial security. Not even love.

At least, not specifically. But all of these are encompassed by the shared longing for belonging, to be part of a community that offers care, support, and shared values.

Belonging is a common lead longing, but just scratch the surface and a secondary longing pops up: most say they want to feel they belong among the people who live close to them, but instead, have friends and family scattered far and wide.

Not surprising in 2026.

As we sense the upheaval, we long to be close to the ones we love most and with whom we have shared values.

Belonging and proximity have been our family’s focus over the last couple of years. We went from being scattered across four continents to now having most of us living within easy walking distance here in Amsterdam.

For me, it is the first time in my life when I have felt both a sense of belonging among those with whom I felt I had things in common and actual proximity to those I love.

But belonging and proximity have often eluded me. So, I have always looked for the bright spots where I was.

Adopted at birth, I had little in common with my family. I felt different from my earliest memories, at the age of 3.

At 10, we moved to a ten-acre wooded property three gravelly miles from town, population 325. We lived in a garage for five years while my parents saved to build a house.

Everything was far. I walked the three miles home, often in the dark, when after-school activities or working in the fields finished and my parents were still at work.

I was considered an outsider, not having parents and grandparents rooted there. We were not part of the community.

But I looked for the bright spots. I was captivated by the tangled forest on our property, and spent hours there, exploring it alone.

I loved to learn, and enjoyed inspiring others. In high school, I took top student government roles, and was both the valedictorian and the homecoming queen as a senior.

I loved my friends and teachers, but I never felt a sense of belonging in the community. I felt sure that at college, in another state, I would finally be among those who might be more like me.

But at my private university, I did not relate to my peers' family trips to Hawaii and Mexico, their boarding school stories and preppy clothes. I didn’t want to get drunk. I did not care about being popular or even academic.

I decided to see my difference as a bright spot. It freed me. I studied, and worked two jobs, with my vision set on adventure.

So, I spent my senior year (1981-1982) living and studying in nine Asian countries.

Starting in South Korea, where I wandered through the rice paddies behind the university and explored the mesmerizing nearby city of Seoul.

Kyoto, Japan, where I visited Buddhist temples, inhaling the scent of the incense and feeling a sense of peace that was new to me.

Beijing, China, where the streets were lined with mountains of cabbages and packed with bicyclists, every single one wearing a gray or navy uniform. Traveling across the country by train, agog at the sheer number of people everywhere.

Chiang Mai, Thailand where I hung out with the long-haired world travelers (“W.T.s”) from Australia who camped in the jungle and hitchhiked into town for a daily banana smoothie at the cafe that played Rolling Stones most days.

Yogyakarta, Indonesia, my first encounter with the Muslim world, and the place where I deepened my experience of using mind-expanding mushrooms.

India: exploring the cities and sites considered sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism, and taking in the overwhelming otherworldliness of it all.

Kathmandu, Nepal. Dancing to Bob Seger’s “Kathmandu” in a local bar with scruffy travelers after weeks of trekking.

Kandy, Sri Lanka to explore meditation at a Buddhist monastery for a month.

Throughout, I conducted interviews for my thesis, a comparative study of contemplative traditions.

When I finally returned to the States, it was the middle of a recession. I grabbed the first job I was offered after 75 resumes and no interviews: a job teaching English in rural Japan.

That’s where I met my husband, a guy who grew up just ten miles away from me in Oregon. We had our first two children there.

Over the years, we raised our family in small-town Oregon as business owners and community activists, but also lived together in Mexico and Argentina.

The next 15 years saw our immediate family living in far-flung corners of the world. New York. Buenos Aires. Dubai. We cheered each other on remotely, got together when we could, and continued to explore possibilities, chase dreams, and build lives.

Fascinating, fulfilling, but challenging years.

We focused on the bright spots where we were rather than what we were missing.

And then, suddenly, we turned to our longing to be near each other.

We were weary of independence.

What we longed for was interdependence.

So we made major moves.

Our daughters, their partners, and their children. Leaving homes, communities, jobs, and schools.

Now, most of us live within walking distance of each other here in Amsterdam.

Proximity, and all the perks that come with it.

(One daughter has created a similarly supportive situation in Amman, living very close to her husband’s wonderful extended family there.)

I feel an easy kinship here in Amsterdam that I have not felt anywhere, even in the U.S. I appreciate (and share) the frugality, practicality, hardiness, and progressive perspective of the Dutch people. I value their ideas of what’s right and good and important.

They make sense to me.

That’s the closest I’ve found to belonging: a shared sense of what matters most.

When I share this story, people get a faraway look in their eyes.

I can see them imagining what it might feel like to live near their parents, or their siblings, or their best friends.

They ask, “How’s it going?” with an implied really at the end.

And I tell them, honestly, “We have never been happier.”

Proximity. Belonging. And bright spots everywhere.

Walking my 3-year-old grandson to preschool here in Amsterdam.

PROMPT

What is your own experience of and relationship to proximity and belonging?

Have you longed to live near those who are far away, or felt a wistful wanting to be among those who have a shared sense of what matters most?

Have you taken any steps in order to make this a reality?