Our Need to "Belong".

Elder Bruce C. Hafen and Marie K. Hafen

(General Authority Emeritus)

The Belonging Heart: The Atonement and Relationships with God and Family Heart, p.3

On some days, our dealings with other people might prompt us to think that the greatest reward in the life after death should be that God, and everyone else, will just leave us alone, unencumbered by the needs and demands of others.     

However, Jesus Christ came to accomplish the great at-one-ment, not the great alone-ment. He came to overcome our separation from God and from one another. He seeks to bring us to his Father, to himself, and to each other, at one, through the gift and power of his Atonement. Even though we do need some space for ourselves, something deep inside each of us instinctively responds to this gospel of belonging, drawing us to certain other people and to God.     

The Belonging: The Atonement and Relationships with God and Family Heart, p.7

The world leads us to believe that we can fill the void (this natural yearning to belong eternally to close friends, family and God) with immediate pleasure, power, and material things. In response, most of us sample these short-term gratifications, often at great cost. Yet when we taste them, our soul-hunger is somehow still with us. We can't get enough of what we don't really need. So we remain incomplete.

Italics added from a previous paragraph for clarity