My Tribe

Thursday, October 16th, 2008
watching d sunset by Gagan Gupta

watching d sunset by Gagan Gupta

Tribes eBook

Along with the Tribes book by Seth Godin, there’s a new free eBook going around, written by those who got in early enough to join the triiibes.com website (what is with that – there’s more than one I in tribe, perhaps?)

Anyway, I opened it, I read the first one and had another BAM! moment. BAM! moments are excellent because they help you realise something that you were ignoring before. BAM! moments suck because they bring up all the hurt, fear & shame that where the reason you were ignoring the something in the first place.

BAM! moments are worth writing about…

Worth reading

The first story/post/section in the eBook is called “Tribes You Don’t Want to Belong to” (not to go offtrack, but why the mixed capitalisation? I always find that annoying). It’s written by Jon Morrow and it’s about being disabled. Go read it.

Worth paraphrasing

I’ve picked out the parts that say what I need to say, added or changed parts that I need and removed bits that don’t apply. They ask you not to change it, but I’m not changing the eBook, I’m just writing my own version of one of the stories. I hope that’s ok by the Triiibe.

Tribes You Don’t Want To Belong To

“Sometimes, you don’t get to choose the tribes that you belong to. They choose you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I’m a member of one of those tribes.”

“But regardless of how we arrived, no one wants to be a member.”

“Some people take it hard. They feel like they’ve been kidnapped from another tribe, the Tribe of Normal People. They feel like everything they were and everything they knew was taken away.

Eventually though, most of us realize that the Tribe of Normal People doesn’t actually exist.”

“It’s strange, but we also tend to stay away from each other, as if being around one another could remind us that we are a member of the tribe. We prefer to forget.

Still, we have common leaders, people that inspire us.”

“For the longest time, I didn’t want to be a part of it.”

“It takes courage to look at yourself and accept your [differences]. It takes courage to love yourself anyway. It takes courage to go beyond merely trying to survive your life and start trying to actually enjoy it.

How could you complain about being in a tribe like that? It’s wonderful.”

“Would I still like to be cured of my [difference]?”

“When you learn to accept yourself, you also learn to accept the tribes you belong to. They don’t have to be rich or clever or even desirable. The fact is, it’s your tribe.

And sometimes, that’s all that matters.”

So what was my point?

Since I’m comparing myself to a disabled person, I want to clarify a couple of things.

My difference isn’t obvious. I can hide my difference if I want to. Some disabled people can too, but not all. I have a choice about letting others who meet me know, but at some point it becomes a choice of lying or being yourself and that isn’t a choice at all.

It affects me everytime I interact with someone. It’s there changing the way I behave, how I connect with people, how I feel. Until I learn completely to not let it define me I will still give it some power over me. In that way I feel it is the same.

I want to know more people in my tribe, but I’m scared by it too.

For both our tribes (Jon’s and mine) I know that there are people who are proud of being a member (heck, I have my moments), and therefore might take offense at the phrase “no one wants to be a member”. The point is that these tribes change the way you view the world – you can’t be in or out of these tribes without changing who you are and how you think. Being in these tribes brings lessons that others don’t always learn, and that’s a bonus, but you can learn these lessons another way, and I therefore think that people (if it were possible to have the choice) would choose the other way. That’s what that phrase means to me. You don’t choose to be a member of the tribe. You find yourself in it and you deal.

I don’t want to offend anyone with this. But I needed to say something.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

«
»

8 comments

chas:
 1 

hey james…

i think one of the big things is to let go of any shame around membership in a particular tribe, which may get in the way of actually engaging with the other members (one of the perks!).

i am a member of the “lost my child to the courts of america” tribe and truth tell, i’ve been in a certain amount of shame and suffering from this, and haven’t found any other members of this tribe to hang with since i moved away from the “scene of the crime” (someone should start a blog about “crimes of the courts”.

thanks for starting this discussion, and spurring me to connect with some of my other forced-absentee fathers.

October 16th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Amy:
 2 

@chas – you should meet my friend commonreader (http://commonreader.livejournal.com) she rants against stuff like that all the time.

@james – I’m glad you wrote this, not because we share the same tribe (I’ve gotten kinda jaded about it, I have stories to share later) but because reading it made me want to download the book. I got the feed this morning and thought “why would I want to download this?”

October 16th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
James:
 3 

@chas – I wish you the best of luck connecting with your tribe. I can’t imagine…

@Amy – lol, glad it could help on at least some level :) I’ve only actually read the first one, after that I didn’t have the energy to read any more.

October 16th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Urban Panther:
 4 

Two related stories:
1. My cousin had a diving accident at age 27 and is now a quadriplegic with limited use of his arms and hands. He is my age, so has been paralyzed for 18 years. He told me this Spring he came to a point he had to make a decision. He could commit suicide or he could stay alive. He said firmly to his body I am going live and live large, and I am dragging you along for the road!

2. My brother is gay and has ALWAYS been accepted by his family, but it amazed me that so many of his friends and boyfriends were shunned by their families. This horrifies me. A co-worker has been with his partner for 20 years (a record these days in any relationship!) but he comes to work every day and talks about his cats. He never once makes reference to his partner. He says it’s exhausting filtering his conversations. I bet it is! I don’t think he really needs to filter his conversations, but for some reason he does, and I guess they are based on his experiences. Sad, sad, sad.

I don’t think anybody needs to shove their tribe in anybody else’s face. I don’t care what your tribe is. I am Wiccan, which still has a stigma attached to it. I don’t deny I am Wiccan, but I don’t shout it the rooftops either. My brother doesn’t walk around waving gay rights signs. My cousin doesn’t volunteer his time for any wheelchair accesible advocacy groups. We just live our lives, proud of who we are, with no need to shout and scream about who we are.

And we effect change this way. My cousin makes sure he can get around, and if he can’t he makes proposals to companies and groups on how they make changes. My brother votes for political parties that support gay rights. I hope I change the world by spreading the love and wisdom inherent in my belief system.

Whoa! Didn’t expect to write all that! I’m done *smile*

October 16th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
James:
 5 

@Urban Panther – wow, thanks for such a long response.

I originally wrote the post with my tribe mentioned. Then I took it out because it felt too shove-in-face. Then I kept it out because I thought it was easier for others to relate their own experiences.

Thanks for sharing so many of you and your family’s experiences. I’m honoured.

I totally respect the way you mention to support your tribe by quietly living your life. I don’t want to campaign, but neither will I let myself be discriminated based on my tribe.

October 16th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
James:
 6 

Though it is beside the point I wanted to make with this post. Since everyone has been so open and sharing in their comments I want to make sure that I don’t seem ashamed of my tribe. At least not in such good company. As for other times – I’m working on that ;)

In fact, I’ve several tribes:
I’m male.
I’m gay.
I’m highly intelligent.
I’m British.
I’m a dancer.
I’m a geek.

And I’ve gone through something like the quotes above for all of these.

October 16th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Karen Murphy:
 7 

I’m a member of a different tribe, the moms-of-kids-with-special-needs tribe. Also the non-custodial-mothers tribe. It helps that I can write about being in these tribes, and I’m grateful that I have venues to do so. I don’t mean to spam you with links, but have a look at “The Club”, a recent column at Imperfect Parent: http://tinyurl.com/5e36vr (Also I write a column at Literary Mama called Motherhood from Afar).

Any time you perceive yourself as different, it opens you to potentially feeling shame about the differences. I’m finding that, at least for me, the shame is mainly self-inflicted. When I expect there to be judgment, there is. I’m not the member of a tribe that suffers open discrimination (and worse), so I can only speak to my experiences (and I might likely have a different outlook if I was a member of one of those tribes), but I’m learning that for the most part when people wear their differences with confidence, then other people *are* affected, as Urban Panther mentioned. Other people can’t help but see you as more whole and complete, simply because that’s how you see yourself.

I’m still waiting for the time when we all relate to one another as people, and that the differences are embraced as part of one another’s wholeness.

October 17th, 2008 at 4:11 am
James:
 8 

@Karen – I totally agree that the shame from being in a tribe is mainly from yourself. There are others who may be less than compassionate, but it is possible to let what they feel have no impact. It is not so straight forward when the lack of compassion is from yourself. Fortunately, we are in complete control of how we view ourselves and have the power and ability to change that – though it may take some time. :)

October 17th, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Leave a reply

Name (*)
Mail (will not be published) (*)
URI
Comment