Musings on belonging

 We all need to belong. The first link we experience is belonging to our family. While this may be problematic at times and not always a happy dependency, nevertheless our family is our first tribe. The subject of belonging came to my mind whith the book I am reading – The Art of Belonging by Hugh Mackay an Australian social researcher and an author of many books with a psychological slant. The second trigger was a recent post on Personal Reflections concerning internet community, the author refers to as an internet village. Nice label, I like it.

Belonging is obviously important to all of us and I have been reflecting on it for quite some time.  Hugh Mackay subtitled his book – It’s not important where you live, it’s how you live. It  indicates to me that we have at least some influence on belonging or not belonging to a tribe. When I was a small girl, I did not have any siblings and my mother kept away from me children who did not behave up to her standards. As the result I did not have mates to play with exception for the times with my grandparents. The frequent time in solitude made me an avid reader rather early, my friendships were imaginary ones.  I developed a bad habit of being somewhat reserved and a loner until later on when I went to school. I must have been rather popular then as I found some pictures from my school years showing me being engaged in school group activities like folk dancing. I even performed in the school play at my grammar school times. It was not all that bad with me after all, I am glad to realise.

I belonged to this group of young people for four years - my high school class. I still remember some names. 

Personal Reflections praise the value of internet belonging telling the readers that at times blogging may lead to a friendship. Jim Belshaw calls the group of regular readers who exchange blog comments on mutually interesting subjects – his village. I find the concept very attractive and I like to visit the Jim's village. With familiarity of covered subjects and personalities of the regular readers, one develops a nice feeling of understanding the village and even belonging.   I can see that such blogs may lead to “real” friendships.

If one wants to be philosophical and complicate the issue a bit one could ask what makes a friendship or belonging to a group of people with common interests “real”. Is it that they meet in person at some stage? Or is it that they are genuine in expressing their views? What makes such belonging real?

Hugh Mackay in the chapter Online Communities sees some advantages of online friendships and believes that they may lead to having a comfortable feeling of belonging. He is critical of mobiles used as a “life line” that takes priority over life situations, even intimate ones. I agree with this view but I have not found  in the book convincingly strong arguments against internet communities like blogging or FaceBook friends. They obviously have their merits. I have formed friendships via internet, participatd in activities of support groups and studied online. For me internet plays an important role in my “real” life. If I ask myself a question – is this enough to stop at internet friendships, communities and villages forgetting about physical contact with people, the answer is of course NO. I would miss smiles, tone of voice, touch... 

We know about verbal and nonverbal messages and the rule 7%-38%-55%. It has been taught in public speaking courses for many years. Only 7% of the message we send when speaking is verbal. 38% - is tone of voice and 55% - body language. Sure we could use video. Still, this would not be  enough for a full message.

Considering these points I could not live without internet and my internet friendships but they cannot replace my “real” friendships and “real” belonging.