Tribe

The idea of finding our tribe is not a new one. Actually, many of us have done it since childhood. But the notion sometimes gets lost in the drone shuffle of everyday life. It came back to me when MerlinPurpura shared an end of year post that included this bit:

The idea of "the right tribe" also appears in another book I told you about, The 100 Year Life, by Gratton and Scott, with a less poetic but equally blunt term. They call it the regenerative friendships, those opposed to the toxic ones, which fill one with inspiration and tranquility. Obesity, cigarettes and even happiness, they say, are contagious. That is why they remind us that, to take care of our health and vitality, we must take care of those relationships that make us better people.

And he cannot be more right. I have known Merlin for years. We go way back. And we have often talked about how we have stopped talking for awhile (once, for years!), but when we catch up we do so without a glitch. It's like we have last talked the day before. And I think that's what I feel when I blog. I came back to blogger after some time away from it. I decided to come back and start writing long posts instead of micro-blogging again because I consider it part of my self-care. The fact that I have been lucky enough to find a tribe here, a tribe of like-minded individuals that share my penchant for things ranging from the profane to the sacred, has been an added bonus to the idea of writing as solipsism.

The people I read here in blogger (and in wordpress, natch) are quirky, smart, funny, deep, sexy and interesting humans. Just a look at my blog roll or at my comments and you will see why we click. The comments we leave on each other's blogs are snippets of a long, uncensored conversation we keep going post after post. I think that those comments build up a kind of online friendship network that sometimes connects us to other people in ways we sometimes don't even connect IRL.

Could it be that because we are online we undress our souls in a more radical way? Could it be that we find ways through these posts to communicate in ways we didn't know were possible? Could it be that the questions we put out in the universe somehow find an answer? Could it be that we feel confident that our tribe will not judge or be biased?

I don't know. I have no idea why is it that we do it. What I do know is that the result are these relationships we forge with people online that end up giving us that sense of community that sometimes we forget we need. Maybe because we are social animals. And because we do need others. That's why I imagine I keep posting here, because apart from cleaning my head from cobwebs, I have found a tribe. A tribe that makes me feel good. A tribe that 'gets' me. And that's a cool feeling.

So thanks for being here (even the ones that lurk! Yeah, you know who you are) and thanks for reading. Thanks for taking some minutes out of your life to drop by and connect. I will try and do the same. Because even though we may not do it to live one hundred years (a la Garcia-Marquez) we can do it for self-care. And we all know there's nothing more important than that.

XOXO

P.S.  let’s keep cultivating our regenerative friendship. Yep.