Where do I belong?
Author: Todd Hoskins Issue: 2023-10-04
Where do I belong?
by Todd Hoskins
Do I belong with the international community? The denizens who take a lot of weekend excursions, and pride themselves in their openness, curiosity, and number of languages spoken?
Do I belong to the North American community? The mostly white, expat assemblage of surfers, former surfers, wannabe surfers, adventurers, and retirees?
Do I belong to the *Tico *community? The Costa Ricans who gather on porches, beaches, sidewalks, sodas, and sometimes at the village plaza?
Six weeks from now, we will have reached the milestone of living in Costa Rica for a full year. I don’t feel fully at home with any of these groups because we’re not financially wealthy, not retired, don’t ride the waves (ocean waves at least), or fluently speak Spanish.
This is my last Plex entry on being a respectful digital nomad, reflecting on life in Costa Rica and how I want to live in a place where I’m an outsider–an outsider with a heritage of colonization which makes me, in some sense, the furthest thing from an outsider. I’ve written on language, food, and cultural differences. It’s fitting to close this series by exploring belonging.
Rather than “where do I belong?” or “when do I belong?” john a. powell asks the question differently, “To whom do you belong?” Rather than a place, family, or tribe, belonging can be understood as an interconnected ancestry of love. Who has helped me get here? He knows that when we ask that question, we expand our circles of belonging to include great, great grandparents, writers, teachers, colleagues, social workers, uncles, aunts, dogs, trees, rivers, children, rabbis, priests, and fields of wildflowers..
I spent seven hours today on phone and video calls, speaking English, listening to others speak English. At the end of a long day, I notice that I crave comfort. Comfort often means familiarity. For me, there is no better comfort and familiarity after a long day than a hoppy beer on the porch with my beloved and dog by my side.
We tend to rest in sameness. I spend less time with people who are different than me when I’m worn out. This feels like it’s happening across North American cultures. We’re stressed, so we go back to what we know. I don’t want to live that way.
I believe we can create welcoming spaces. We can be inclusive and compassionate. But we can’t make people feel like they belong.
For me, I don’t experience belonging because of where I am, or who I am with. I belong when I re-member that I’m a part of life, when I’m in the pulse of Life. So if someone were to ask, “To whom do you belong?” Life would be my answer. Nature.
Living here has reinforced that if I want to have the energy to create spaces where belonging is more possible, then I need to spend more time in Nature. If I want to speak the language and enjoy the diversity of people here, I need more jungle and less computer.
[Image not included in the current archive. Images may be included in the future.]
Related:
- Todd Hoskins (author)
- 2023 (year)
- Topics: Community Building