Tribe
“The
truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of
belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of
self-acceptance, because believing that you are enough is what gives
you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.”
Brene
Brown
Having a sense of tribe
is critical to human happiness. Most modern humans, particularly in
the western world, do not think of themselves as tribal, but we all
form tribes. We gather around us people who agree with us, who like
us well enough to spend time with us, and who mirror back to us how
we think and feel. When we are with these people, we have the sense
of kinship and acceptance that pack animals need—and we are,
indeed, pack animals.
My sons went to a private
school that was multi-ethnic and diverse in its population. The
common denominator was that students had to test into the school, and
their parents had to be able to pay the tuition. While I was married
to a physician, I was one of the pack there. When we separated and
then divorced, I was no longer allowed to run with the pack. Now I
was an outcast, invisible, no longer part of the that particular
tribe. I felt like an interloper, a shadow on the wall. I listened
while the mothers talked to one another as though I was not there. I
experienced first hand the sudden lack of enthusiasm on the part of
the staff at seeing me. I did not have the courage to confront them,
because I did not have enough sense of myself to feel I deserved
better treatment. Instead, I developed a simmering anger and
resentment.
Imagine, if you can, what
our minority populations have experienced for hundreds of years. This
sense of not belonging, of being shunned and side-lined as “not one
of us” is devastating. Buying into inferiority, accepting
second-class citizenship leads to depression, then anger, and
finally, to defiance. Sooner or later, they either become part of the
tribe, or they turn on the tribe and wreak havoc. That's what we're
seeing today.
After hundreds of years
of being an underdog, gaining self-acceptance, and thus belonging, is
hard and slow going. It takes personal work on an emotional level. All parties
have to want to become part of the solution, and that requires
self-searching, and taking responsibility for our role in a very
well-established human drama. We have to change the way things have
always been and to do that, we have to work together—as one tribe.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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