People often ask me where I feel more at home, in the Netherlands or the United States. I don’t have a straight answer, and perhaps there is no answer, because of the question.
Firstly, I wasn’t born in either country. I was born on Curacao in the Caribbean. While I find the island attractive and love the blue seas and skies year around, I can’t claim it really as home in a sense that if I would move back there I would feel at home. I didn’t live there for very long and the culture of the local population is not mine. I would be seen as a stranger and rightfully so. Yet, interestingly enough, deep in my bones, there is a connection to the dry cactus-covered land, the intensity of tropical smells and colors and the ceaseless Passat winds stroking my skin.
So where do I feel at home? Where do I feel I belong? I lived in the Netherlands (and in Germany for a bit) from age eight to 30, when I moved to the United States. I do remember feeling Dutch as a teenager and feeling at home in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, graduating from high school, I chose geology and later mining engineering as my major, a choice that would most certainly take me abroad. Reflecting back, there seem to have been two reasons.The first one was that in my heart, I knew I had to pursue a path that would take me abroad to uncommon places, a longing to again feel the tropical sun and warm winds on my skin.
The second reason might perhaps be even more primary, except I didn’t know it at the time. It was a deep attraction and even a reverence for the Earth, the soil, the rocks, the ground, the Mother. (Obviously, mining was a crazy way to give expression to such a feeling, but I can hide behind my cluelessness as an18-year old).While I didn’t work in mining for very long, I did move abroad and found myself in North Carolina, the United States, where I quickly turned my engineering skills toward environmental science, thereby making contributions to environmental protection and ‘Earth care,’ so, in a way that all worked out. The last decade from 2010 to 2020, I have moved back and forth between North Carolina and Europe for various and mostly troublesome life reasons, but it gave me an excellent chance to compare the two.
What is belonging?
What I am going to avoid is getting into specifics of what I like and dislike about the United States and the Netherlands. Instead I will deconstruct belonging for a bit.
We cannot just belong. We have to belong to something or somewhere. Belonging is a kinship. A relationship with something, often associated with a certain place with all its physicality, history and cultural flavors. Establishing or reestablishing this relationship brings forth a familiarity, a home-coming. It is an open invitation to return or settle down and put down roots. What it is it then that we would belong to?
First, we can belong to the land. The physical material, the rocks, the landscape. The sounds, colors, smells and feeling of that particular geographical place. Indigenous people will tell us that certain places have certain energies. If that energy resonates with our energy flows, that’s when we feel we belong and that land is in our blood and bones.
Second, we may feel a familiarity with the structures, the age old buildings, squares and lanes of a city, where we used to walk and play as kids. If you ever wandered the ancient towns of Europe or somewhere else, you are likely to have felt it.
Third, we can feel a sense of homecoming when we feel a connection to the people and their behaviors, and especially their rites, our rites. What comes to mind is the Sabbath. Regardless of the actual individuals, I can imagine that a Jewish person feels a certain belonging during that Friday evening meal, even if she is in the company of unknown fellow Jews anywhere in the world. Of course, that was precisely the point, because the Jews didn’t have a home, so they had to create one, regardless of locality. Cultural patterns and celebrations give us a sense of belonging. And finally, there is the familiarity of our people that embrace us. When our loved ones are in a strange place and we show up and are greeted and loved, we do feel like we belong.
It is evident that belonging has to do with familiarity. We notice and feel that something is known to us. This means that we have been there or done that before.
Going back to my own situation and looking at the above, it seems there is nothing stopping me from belonging to two or more different places and/or socio-cultural patterns. But do I…. as globetrotter who has lived in multiple places? The answer is no. I don’t feel as if I truly belong anywhere. Not in the Netherlands and not in the United States. This begs the question,…. do I let myself belong? Most likely not, as a result of being conditioned by exactly that question: Where do you feel most at home?” On top of that, as a globetrotter, I have seen and experienced many places, so I can’t but discern. And when I do so, I am noticing I inadvertently tend to focus on the aspects that don’t match. The discordants of a place or situation. But every place has pros and cons and it is evident that focusing on the good is more helpful than on what’s lacking. I want to belong, and I will! From now on, I will answer that I feel that I belong, and feel at home in both the Netherlands and in North Carolina and in whatever other places that I clearly have one of the aforementioned bonds with. It is not necessary to belong fully and totally. It is fine just to belong. There is no scale of belonging.
Alienation and times of uncertainty
On a final note, the flip side of that familiarity of belonging is uncertainty and alienation. If we feel alienated, we don’t feel we belong anywhere anymore. We currently live in times of great uncertainty and rapid change. Many people are feeling that their world is changing too fast. They don’t belong anymore. And as a result, they become fearful and angry and start attacking the people and patterns that they perceive as the dangers.
Our leaders would do well to make sure that certain anchors remain that allow for people to feel a sense of belonging. And at the same time, help people understand and accept a world where change is inevitable. In that way, it is the journey itself that now is what’s familiar, and the place of departure is a foundation for the steps to take, Instead of a place we cling to. When we feel fully comfortable with our journey, we can trust that the goal will emerge and beckon us. (www.the2nd.life)
