If I’ll be asking other lawyers about their experiences with Belonging in their law firms, I’d best start with a definition of Belonging.  My predicament is that, as already mentioned, I’ve never had to closely examine what Belonging actually means in a professional setting.

My conundrum reminds me of how David Foster Wallace began his Kenyon College commencement address, This is Water:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?

So, what the hell is Belonging?  I do know a few things: