Tag sociology

Grow Belonging

Anne 4 Comments

Grow belonging. A rare word combination, yet its’ meaning seems clear. The idea that humans seek to belong, and the feeling of not belonging is referenced often in the ways we might feel separate or on the outside of something. Yet what if we each had the ability to “grow belonging”, to nurture and tend to those belonging seeds for ourselves? Then as time moved along our sense of belonging would grow, and it would be ours, inside of us.

In some cultures and communities people are asked “Who do you belong to?” meaning who are your people, ancestors or relatives. Many of us may not feel we belong to anyone or any group even if we can answer that question. Maybe someone’s belonging is situational, meaning as long as you have that job, or live in that neighborhood, or are married to that person, you belong to that group and have an “identity”.

But external connections can shift and change. In those cases, then who do we belong to, or where? Belonging to oneself seems a new possibility to consider. Especially having the ability to “grow” it.

Grow belonging. Maybe when we find ourselves in new circumstances, like a new community or experience, we can also find ways to share our authentic self as we grow belonging. No matter our age we may need to grow belonging in new and different ways as our life takes new turns or changes. Ideally we know how to grow those belonging seeds, as well as keep them healthy.

The Idea of Deserving

Anne 2 Comments

In reading the novel “Sister of My Heart” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, a line on page 301 stood out.

“… love is never about deserving, is it? Nor is hate. “

Whether this sounds like a truism or not, it seemed curious enough to ponder. We might not often think about the deserving part of feelings, like love and hate. In terms of deserving hate, what came to mind were the innocent or unprovoked ways one might be on the receiving end, like being born a certain way or in a certain place. How do these feelings manifest?

Years ago a sociology professor discussing “isms” tried to illustrate the value of being aware of our own personal worldviews. She described the worldview as the individual lens we each see through and filter our own experiences. Whether we grew up in a nuclear family, orphanage, poor, well off, healthy, sickly, male, female, skin color, country of origin etc, all those things and more make up our personal worldview and “biases” through which we experience the world. We may not want to change our worldview, but it seems important to understand what it is and own it. Our choices and behaviors emerge from our specific worldview, a worldview if not examined, we might think is everyone’s way of thinking, feeling, or responding.

We might be acting on an unexamined feeling or bias, one particular to ourselves; a micro experience rather than a larger shared view. For instance, maybe we had a strong experience with a red-haired person. We might then have an unexplored bias against anyone with red hair; maybe an aversion, never hired them, dated them etc..Or the opposite. A bias towards red haired people. Whichever, we had a feeling and then acting on it, in this case, affecting our response to red haired people.

“Knowledge is power” as the saying goes. And another one (Plato?) is “An unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Circling back on this notion …” love is not about deserving it, nor is hate.” It takes courage to invest in self-knowledge, to understand our motivations and our worldview, whether we want to make changes or not. At least we might better understand our own “love and hate” responses.