| Finding your tribe. A few comments here refer to religion, but I think this is a better label. I've restarted life a few times, moving to foreign countries where I didn't know anyone. Each time, it isn't as if I landed and just instantly had a group of people I related to and enjoyed spending time with. It usually has taken a year, and it's a tough year when I was thinking "maybe I made a mistake". It wasn't as if I didn't have "friends", but I didn't feel like the people I was spending time with were "my people". Which was fine. But then, sometimes, you find a group that you really click with. The nice thing about this is that you really appreciate how rare it is to find your tribe, particularly when you've been spending time with people who aren't yours. I think this might be along the same line as religion and parenthood. Though parenthood is kinda forcing the world to accept that you're making your own tribe, but maybe we just ignore that. You can also belong to more than one tribe, which is nice. I have my social tribe, and my work tribe, and I truly feel connected to both of them. Growing up, I never had a tribe until I moved away from home, and even then, I knew that the friends I had wouldn't be friends for life. I think most people accept that their family is their tribe, and though I'm still close with a few of my siblings, I probably wouldn't have known what it feels like to be free of a family which isn't your tribe, unless I had moved away (which I did in high school). |