Unless we get what we need can we really know what we need?

As a race, our desires are vast, and opportunities plentiful, but our choices can make or break us. However we live our lives, we are all chasing something else, something interminably elusive, indefinable, beyond our comprehension. Yet our endeavours, however varied or esoteric these may be, are immaterial to our innate desire to belong.

Wanting more is a means of controlling desire, desire that is not only passion but power: power to create, but also power to control our fears. What we pursue can guide us to a place of inner sanctuary, somewhere of greater familiarity. But it can also lead us along hidden paths to strange places, where we can feel at odds with ourselves or withdrawn from those around us.

Orson Welles once said, “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.” This is often paraphrased (as ‘We’re born alone and we die alone’) in a vain attempt to comfort the sick or dying, as if in their passing some universal balance will be restored. It is also a phrase frequently uttered as a (somewhat bleak) attempt to reconcile the lonely or broken- hearted among us.

It could be said that to ‘live alone’ would be a worse fate: to walk around like mindless amputees devoid of human association, emotion, or recollection. It has oft been said that our friends make our world. The pioneering Western philosopher Aristotle alleged as much, claiming that "without friends no one would choose to live". For where does form exist without a relation to other things, without recognition from an Other or others.

We share a natural compulsion to love and be loved by others. In love and friendship we are at once the agent and recipient, the channel and the vessel. We are captivated by the beauty we perceive in those we choose to interact with – not necessarily beauty in terms of physical attraction – but where it represents substance and spirituality. Eros, in its refined definition: not as libidinal energy or love (as in Greek mythology), but as love, pure and simple (as redefined by Plato).

For those of us that have moved around our whole lives, that do not have a home, or native dwelling to speak of, a feeling of belonging can seem alien. But in the experience of others we find the nature of the soul, mind, heart, and senses.  Here, we undertake a journey, where home is not the starting point, but rather the summit of understanding at which we arrive.

The closest state I can imagine to a life without others would be the life of an insomniac, where sleeplessness is strongly experienced as a deepening anxiety - a kind of not being at home with oneself. Locked in to a stark lingering moment, with barely the substance of a shadow, you feel as if life may never leave you, and if it did you would not know the difference.

By Amanda Carey/MOLI