Tuesday, 26 August 2008

• finding your tribe

  We drove by three boys looking out at the sea on the middle of the bridge, and I couldn’t help smiling and thinking “someone’s making a memory right now.” That’s true of the times I see big groups of young or old people laughing it up at eating places, or even walking through my old college and someone inevitably knocks over a glass bottle by accident and it shatters, and there’s a second of “oh shit” and then everyone in the canteen, no matter if the person was a junior or a senior, girl or boy, known or fresher, everyone gets up and hoots and yells and smilingly cheers on the person who broke it. The tradition must be centuries old, as old as the college, but it’s embarrassment mixed with a sense of joy, it’s nice to just belong. That’s what I think about tradition, that when you perform a  ritual, you feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself, as if you really are tapping into something bigger than the immediate moment. Like how you can walk into a big stadium or Carnegie Hall or a Harappa-Mohenjodaro ruin or the Roman Colosseum and think automatically with a sense of awe “great things have happened here”. You can actually feel it reverberate in the air around you, it says: hallowed ground. Some places of worship have that very strongly. It's as if the intentions of those who treaded in heavily looking for a place to let go of the world’s burdens, have, in looking up at the rafters, created a sense of reverence to hang for an eternal instant in the air.

  And I think of weddings, and how even though I and the other will write our own vows and create our own ceremony, there is something to be said for weddings! That sense of awe in saying the same words your ancestors did (“in the language of our fathers”) with your partner, looking into someone’s eyes and thinking this is the one for me and at the same time, knowing in that tribal part of you that you are re-living with the tribe the personal moment, and how powerful is that acceptance of the tribe for what you are doing and your own acceptance that you belong to the tribe and your essence is joined with it in your marriage and future propagation of its line.

  I am everything I was born into, but I am part of larger tribe, a tribe that has no name but is big enough to allow multiple interpretations of its ritual, its God and its purpose. It is truly where we come from when we do what we do that makes us belong to each other, and I say this from experience because it has been in the most unexpected places that I have met people who no matter how different their background, really got me. If I had to put a name to it, I would say it has a certain freedom of spirit, that everyone has it but not all prefer it.

  I saw Angelina Jolie speak up for Colin Firth’s rat pack persona with a smile saying “I think it’s ok for people to be wild if they do it with a good heart, you know, not to hurt anyone.” And I saw Sharon Stone and Naomi Campbell speak up for Kate Moss and her substance abuse phase, that she was going through a rough patch and just needed support to get through and was still one of the most professional models around. And that’s what’s true, that when you are down, the person you least expect, and often least know, will speak up for you because they remember themselves and in a way, they are saying I see you coming home, come home. It’s the most important gesture in history, because it proves that no one is alone, even if they feel isolated, that there are others going through the same thing in exactly the same way and that is exactly what coming home is about, it’s about finding your real family and connecting with them no matter what the rest of the world says.

  “Your circle of friends will defend the silver lining” – John Mayer, The Heart of Life.

  And it’s true.

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