I belong to Glasgow, dear old Glasgow town

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In what sense does anyone belong to anywhere? Do I belong to Boundary Park Hospital, where I was born? Do I belong to Saddleworth, where I haven't lived for 30 odd years? Or do I belong to Glasgow, where my wife and I spent a lovely summer this year?

I don't belong anywhere, and yet I do belong everywhere - that's the answer. I belong in the bosom of my family, spread thinly over the globe - in Melbourne, Australia, in Springhead, where my mother and my sister and her family live, in Ankara, Turkey, where most of my wife's family live, and here in Al Ain, UAE, where I live and work.

We, the people of this Earth, belong in every part of it. We originated in its various corners, becoming homo sapiens, and consequently, we belong to it all, and it belongs to all of us.

We need to take better care of it than we do at present, though, and behave as if it is our property, not to own and do with as we like, but to pass on to our children and their children, intact, and in all its pristine glory, like it was on the day we inherited it.
Robert Leslie Fielding