I commented this via email, but can't resist being the first (!!!) commentator on your article.
The challenge of belonging is real, and I am feeling a real yearning for becoming place bound. That's my interpretation of how to act - find a place and grow deep roots. The pre-existing deep roots are something you feel in the land in places like NZ or Australia, both places of deep indigenous knowing.
It is difficult to reconcile this "I am in THIS place because it is HERE I belong" with the kind of "let the winds take me where it will, to people where I belong" approach that is so strong in the west, and especially in NZ and Australia where the first thing you do when you can is get on a plane out of home. So I live on what I now realise to be the wrong side of Australia (for me), having left the east coast 15 or so years ago, and I now know that I belong to the land in Victoria.
Anyway, my musings about my own personal journey in response to the sense of unbelongingness you write of, a journey maybe similar to your journey down NZ. One of us in Auckland, the other Invercargill, each trying to find our way home.
I look forward to hearing more of microsolidarity.
I commented this via email, but can't resist being the first (!!!) commentator on your article.
The challenge of belonging is real, and I am feeling a real yearning for becoming place bound. That's my interpretation of how to act - find a place and grow deep roots. The pre-existing deep roots are something you feel in the land in places like NZ or Australia, both places of deep indigenous knowing.
It is difficult to reconcile this "I am in THIS place because it is HERE I belong" with the kind of "let the winds take me where it will, to people where I belong" approach that is so strong in the west, and especially in NZ and Australia where the first thing you do when you can is get on a plane out of home. So I live on what I now realise to be the wrong side of Australia (for me), having left the east coast 15 or so years ago, and I now know that I belong to the land in Victoria.
Anyway, my musings about my own personal journey in response to the sense of unbelongingness you write of, a journey maybe similar to your journey down NZ. One of us in Auckland, the other Invercargill, each trying to find our way home.
I look forward to hearing more of microsolidarity.