#26 Belonging
Picture a group that you've been an integral part of. A group that achieved something quite memorable, something you're proud of. A group that makes you smile when you think of them.
It may be a group of school friends, a youth club cohort, your whānau or family, some friends you explored the world with, a sports team, your tribe or clan, flatmates from your Shepherd's Bush dive, drama club mate, your crazy cousins that you love so deeply.
Don't read on until you've carefully chosen that group and you're smiling.
OK, now, I guarantee that group has several (if not all) of the following key attributes:
It's these things that make us feel at home. They help to make us feel we're part of something. Something much bigger than just ourselves.
Being human can be pretty lonely. Particularly in this rather large universe, with plenty of suffering opportunities. We are at our best, at our strongest when we feel part of something bigger than just ourselves.
We like to have purpose. We like to feel a sense of belonging.
A booked titled Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness by Owen Eastwood, explores the concept of belonging by bringing together the Māori concept of whakapapa and the modern concept of 'team'. He contemplates vision and leadership, culture and values, ownership and accountability, inclusion and diversity, bonds and trust and performance.
It's a fantastic and wide roaming read on all things team.
Eastwood talks about the need for "a high-level mix of both competence and selfless commitment to the group" for a team to be high functioning. He also explores the need for "vulnerability and [calculated] risk-taking" within a team environment. And for successful leaders to have "a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will".
Nothing particularly spectacular in that. Although he has woven his stories, reflections and references together in a well-articulated and coherent picture of what it means to belong.
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Where his story-telling does become spectacular is his belonging metaphor, which struck a memorable and lasting chord.
He talks of each individual being part of an unbreakable chain of people, arms interlinked. All those who have come before us and all those who will come after us exist in this chain. This is where we belong.
He describes it as follows:
The sun rose in the east and shone on our first ancestor. Here is our origin story. Just as happens with each passing day, the sun slowly moves down this unbreakable chain of people. Each of us will have our time in the sun. But the sun is always moving. Moving towards the west, where it will finally settle. When the sun shines on us we are alive, we are strong. For we have had passed down to us a culture that immerses us in deep belonging. We feel safe and respected. We share beliefs and a sense of identity with those around us and this anchors us. We share a purpose with them. We share a vision of the future. We fit in here. Rituals and traditions tie us together. The experiences and wisdom of those who walked in the light before our time are passed on to us.
A brief video of the Belonging story and this metaphor can be seen here.
This picture led me to contemplate Youth suicide. An area of huge concern in Aotearoa New Zealand. More youth die due to suicide than total deaths on our roads each year. A total of 538 youth committed suicide in the year from July 2021 to June 2022.
That's 538 young people in just one year who couldn't find their place, couldn't see where they belonged, how they belonged to an unbreakable, enduring and permanent chain of people who came before and after them.
If this book’s concept of belonging and the marvellous metaphor it uses to convey the concept of whakapapa could be taught to all children, surely fewer of our precious young rangatahi would question their place, their value, their purpose on Earth. And maybe more people would understand their obligation to be 'good ancestors' while caring for them.
There's a Māori whakatauki? (or proverb), which talks to the past, present and the future. It goes "Kia whakato?muri te haere whakamua" (I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past). The idea being that we carry the past forward into the future. We do it with the aid of the strength of our ancestors. There's that unbreakable chain!
Understanding your roots is an important part of understanding who you are, and where you're from. But that you belong is the key meaning to find, because once you do, it can never be removed and I mean never, not even after the sun has stopped shining on you.