TEDx Talk - Verbinding is about reinventing our identities in the context of our communities.

For more than three decades, I never felt that I belonged. I never felt that there is a group, a community or a country to which I belong. Regardless of how I curated my appearance and my existence, I never felt that there is a harmony between my presumed identity and my society.?

I was raised to be afraid of anyone who was out of the boundaries of my immediate family. I was lead to believe that if I allow anyone to be part of my group, my little circle of interaction, they would take over my thoughts, my behavior and eventually my identity. I grew up under the shadow of fear of others.

And later, as an adult, when I seemingly broke free from my little circle, I was afraid that I would never be accepted as myself. I lead myself to believe that I will not be accepted because of my accent, because of personality traits and because of my identity. I lived under the shadow of fear of being labeled as others.

As a result of this crippling FEAR, I could never feel protected and guarded and as a?result I could never develop any long-term authentic relations with anyone or anything. And as a result, I could never feel that I belong.

There came a moment in my life when I felt I did not even belong to my own life. The life that I had so carefully curated over the years. In that moment, I realized that all these years I had curated my life and my identity apart from my context, my communities; And for that very reason, I had never felt that I am guarded. And for that very reason, I had never felt that I belonged.

My name is Somaye Dehban, a Dutchified Iranian and I reinvented my identity to become The Community Guardian, not just because that’s the literal translation of my family name – Deh means Community and Ban means Guardian.

I chose to become The Community Guardian also because I have a dream – call it a vision if you will.

I have a dream to live in a world with true personal freedom of choice, equality of opportunity and the ability for people to thrive, which is balanced with a personal responsibility to contribute to the collective good.

And to make that dream a reality, I started a journey:

In a search for the notion of ONE with EVERYTHING, finding that ONE identity that encompasses EVERYTHING that I am, and I do, and I love, I started a journey – at a conscious and subconscious level.

I spoke with many people, many - many - people from all different walks of lives: from political activists to religion converts; from widows of war to poets in exile, from victims of rape to professors of academia and practice to anyone whose path crossed with mine.

I also obsessively read books under the category of “self-help & development” from Start with Why by Simon Sinek to True North by Bill George to 100s more; along with the classics like The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith to The Prince by Machiavelli. I read constitutions, and academic articles and policy papers.

The result of reading over 350 books and 200 academic articles, and speaking with 100s of people, manifested itself in a nexus synergistic model that I have dubbed Verbinding.

Verbinding is the Dutch term for “inter-connectedness” with an emotional hint towards “inter-relatedness” and “inter-dependencies”. Verbinding is about our identities interwoven with our communities, to which we directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously belong.

We hear very often that we live in divided societies. Living in divided societies is another way of saying that we do not feel that we belong – and we do not feel that we belong because we do not feel that we are protected and guarded. So by Guardian our Communities, and bringing back that feeling of safety and harmony we can feel that we belong.

Today, I share with you why reinventing the wheel – reinventing our identities – in the context of our communities is the key to the feeling of belonging, despite all our differences.

Our systems – such as our famous Dutch Polder Model - are based on compromise that only seeks similarities. We have lead to be afraid of our differences. And it is true, we are different from each other. But why should it be something that we are afraid of?

What if valuing our differences is the key to feel safe and protected? Not just tolerating our differences, but truly respecting and valuing them.

Have you ever felt that you have been excluded?

Have ever felt that you have been discriminated against?

If you have experienced these feelings, it’s because somewhere someone – at a personal or communal level – had the feeling of FEAR, fear of difference.

Fear is a natural feeling, fear is an emotional reaction to something that feels dangerous. We feel fear when something makes us feel unsafe and unprotected. If we feel safe and protected then we will not be afraid of our presumed differences.

At this day and age, the area of transitioning to 5G – the fifth-generation of mobile networks – where networks are getting connected with networks at our finger tips - we lost touch with ourselves, with our roots and with our communities.

Due to migration or immigration we no longer necessarily live where our parents lived, and our children’s first language is not necessarily the same as ours. Our ethnicity and our nationality do not necessarily match anymore and we are caught in not just generational gaps but also cultural gaps, political gaps and income gaps to name a few.

How can we feel protected and guarded? By knowing where we are coming from. So there first step is to know our roots. When we know our roots, we feel safe in our own skin.

We need to get back to our roots and know where we are coming from. I needed to understand what it means to be Iranian. I needed to understand what it means to be an Iranian in exile. For that, I went back to my roots, to the family I never understood. I went back to understand why my family, particularly my father, was so afraid of letting anyone getting close to us. Only then I understood that my father, at a very young age, left his community and changed his accent to speak more like people from the capital so he can be accepted as someone of value. He wanted us – his own family – to be protected from that level of discrimination. I understood that even though my father never spoke of his “coping mechanism” with us, at a subconscious level, I had adopted his mechanism as well.

When I understood my own heritage, I needed to get to know my context. What does it mean to be Dutch? And what does it mean to be a non-native Dutch. I needed to understand, accept and value being a non-native Dutch. I needed to feel my interconnectedness with the Dutch society that has hosted since 2005 and made me one of their owns since 2015.

I learned about Dutch history, I learned about Apartheid – the most famous Dutch term in the world. And also about the Dutch Polder Model – the model is based on compromise. And that what makes the Dutch to be know as the nation of tolerance. But we need move beyond respect and toleration, we need to shift gear towards value and synthesis. If we want to feel safe, we need to respect and value our differences.

Synergy helps us value our differences. “Verbinding” is a model that is based on synergy. The essence of synergy is to value differences, to build on strengths, to compensate for weaknesses…And the key to valuing those differences is to realize that all people see the world, not as it is, but as they are.

Synergy catalyzes, unifies, and unleashes the greatest powers within people… Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Synergy helps us to continuously define our identities in our communities and continuously be open to others. And when we continuously reinvent our identities We feel that we are not just connected but interconnected – we feel that we belong.

I needed to become Community Guardian, not a community builder but community guardian. Because being a community builder, in my opinion, implies that we need to start from scratch, to build up something as if nothing excited before. I believe instead of building communities we need to be guarding them. When we feel safe and guarded in our communities, we can value and synthesize our differences and with that we can reinvent our identities.

We are hardwired to be social creatures to be bonded with each other, we are divided because of fear and because we lost touch with our communities, and to lean into our need for bonding and overcome our fears we need to reinvent our identities and that is possible by reconnecting with our roots and our communities.

Take a moment, and think about the last time you unfriended someone on Facebook?

Think about the last time you canceled someone from your network?

Think about the last time you read a statement from a political party that you do not agree with and thought to yourself: “they do not deserve to have a podium and they do not deserve to be here, they do not deserve to have a vote?”

In all these actions and thoughts, you have excluded someone or a community from your network because you have feared they might exclude you or discriminate against you at some point. ?

Reach out to the ones you have excluded, or have excluded you.

Dig into your fears together.

Talk about your state of being apart, your apartheid, together.

Bond over your differences with each other, and immerse yourself in Verbinding with each other.

The road to an inclusive society and bonded, I believe, is not by excluding the ones who are exclusionist.

The road to an inclusive society and bonded, I believe, is by joining forces across sectors and valuing differences.

The road to an inclusive society and bonded, I believe, is by creating integrated solutions focused on synergies rather than on individual components.

The road to an inclusive society and bonded, I believe, is by having true personal freedom of choice, equality of opportunity and the ability for people to thrive, which is balanced with a personal responsibility to contribute to the collective good.

The road to an inclusive society and bonded, I believe, is by reinventing our identities in the context of our communities.