Belonging in our Stories
- smegburke
- Jan 30
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 8
So where’s the belonging, you may ask? I’ve written more about beauty here, possibly because this has seemed safer, less exposed and vulnerable. I recognize my inclination to hide behind other peoples’ thoughts, art, stories. Maybe I’m about to do this again.
Lately I’ve been encouraged by Elizabeth Oldfield, her discussions on attending well and charitably navigating difference - rather needed in the current political climate on both sides of our border. I’m emboldened by her ‘Memoir of an Unremarkable Life’, Oldfield's reflections on writing her own life into her recent book.
She seeks connection in writing, akin to what C. S. Lewis finds in friendship arising from shared passion, the realization “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” She hopes her readers will feel similarly seen and known:
“I longed for the moment when my work made another person feel the sweet relief of recognition. To provoke a response like ‘I thought I was the only one who felt that’ is profoundly humanizing. I have experienced it, in novels as well as memoirs—that single electric sentence that pulls taut the thread of our shared humanity with a twang. Contact.”
I resonated with her hesitation around sharing one’s story. “Radical candor might be in fashion,” Oldfield observes in our social media habits, “but, in reality, the temptation to make ourselves look better than we are is still strong.” Honesty is always a bit risky, but also needed. We need one another’s stories, the ones like ours and the ones which aren’t. Not just the triumphant and spectacular ones but the unremarkable ones, even the failures and struggles.
“Attention is formation, and it matters which lives we pay attention to.…We are image-and-story-shaped creatures, scanning the world for materials with which to make a self. The more access we have to the glorious particularity and diversity of creatures, the more likely we can do that healthily and feel welcome in the world.”
Seeking welcome in the world is an apt way to describe our longing to belong. This may be easier where we find people like us, but I’m hopeful we can also pursue it outside the comfortable and familiar. I hope we may find courage and community where we can bring our stories, to find shared threads, the ‘twang’ of contact in all sorts of lives.
Image Credit:
Photo by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash
Sources:
Elizabeth Oldfield, ‘Memoir of an Unremarkable Life,’ Ekstasis https://open.substack.com/pub/ekstasismagazine/p/memoir-of-an-unremarkable-life?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, HarperOne
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