Unity Makes Strength, Disunity Makes Us (part two)

In this thread of thoughts, I can also feel sentiments towards my home, my home town, my homeland. Yet, despite the theoretical fact that these are my home, my home town, my homeland for the circumstance that I have been born there, I only truly recognize them when via sentiment. If I cannot experience my bond through my feelings then it is an artificial recognition, ink on sheet of paper.

The process of locating one’s belonging; is there really a reason to do so?! Yes, I am a part of my family, my family is settled in my home town and my home town is located in my country, but then my country is situated on my mainland and my mainland is a part of my planet. So, I am a member of my locality and a citizen of the world at the same time. Belonging is not a point of physical parameters; it is a point of sentiment. Geography is for the records. The way I am bonded to my family, the same bond I can feel to my homeland and to any part of the world provided there is my sentiment. Any of these places can be my home.

CLASS OF ’06

track >> PLAY
band >> dire straits
lyrics >> brothers in arms

Most of what we call “belonging” is artificially imposed and the motives can be both constructive and oppressive. Normally, people accept and admit geographical and political boundaries to the point they coincide with their sentimental determination for home. And home is where I feel loved and accepted. These are the true boundaries. You will surely agree that there are cases of having one’s family, home town and country but not feeling home there.

The vivid sensation of belonging comes from the existence of a relation based on love; and it is essential to be mutual, shared. In this relation, as in love, there is no place for possessing. I belong to my home through love and I do not possess it, namely because it is granted to me (by birth or other form of acceptance) and I have not bought it, namely because having home is not equal to owning a house. Moreover, the way my home is mine, the same way it is home to the rest of my family, my fellow-citizens and kindred. Also, it can be home to others who wish to find their place and settle there. Literally and figuratively, situation is the same with one’s home and country. My home is also my friends’, my guests are welcome to visit me there and my door is open to new comers who enter my family specially bonded in some way or another and even become its members. I shall only obstruct an intruder with violent intentions to come within.

Perhaps, the way we recognize and accept our own families, the same way we behave towards the other groups where we consciously or unconsciously belong. Lack of family and of love bond within a family can be painful and can cause seeking of a substitute. If the substitute turns to be successful in supplying with love, then the person may achieve internal peace and even recognition but if not, then the lack of love can turn into hatred. In example, people lacking recognition use to seek their belonging on purpose and tend to gather with others in similar situation. If naturally gained love within family makes its receivers able to respect others’ similar love to “their kindred” on their turn, when people use to artificially achieve such sentiments, they are not able to recognize the sentiments of others. It leads to intolerance and therefore to the fore-mentioned phenomena.

Conclusion is that love is crucial for one’s identity and peace; and they, on their side, are crucial for having a balanced human, respectful to others. Lapse in achieving self-recognition can provoke feelings of insecurity and fear leading to aggressive reactions and/or rejection of others without existence of actual obstruction or threatening by them. It can be executed and happen everywhere, towards fellow-citizens and foreigners, brothers or strangers. The target of such behaviour is not essential itself because the real disturbance comes from inside.

We are all humans, we bear common human features and characteristics, and from this moment onward we are individuals with unique and varying personalities who can respect and interact with others’ individuality or who cannot. To live peacefully we should learn to accept. Being individuals is not an act of dividing; it is a natural state of humanity. (Mass can be objectively more dangerous here when a gathering of individuals with lost or missing self-identification that can become a convenient tool in hands of other individuals with malicious intentions knowing how to use its disturbing features.) Difference between people is not the cause for our internal wars and reasoning our violence with it has not to be accepted, neither excused. (As internal peace is self-responsibility, when I am troubled I am not excused to being troublesome to others and to obstructing their peace.)

Leaning to artificial belongings and drawing artificial boundaries will not lead us to unity and sharing a common world. It will not fill our gaps, cure us from our omissions. It shall not make us home. What shall do it is finding our internal peace by recognizing our true selves and therefore accepting the rest and respecting their differences and individuality. Love and acceptance is what we desperately need. If we concentrate on achieving more of them, giving more of them and therefore receiving as well, only then we shall find our true belonging here.