A Swiss Woman settles in India –9
By Simone Toni
I was told that on 9 November we celebrate State Formation Day in Uttarakhand. So, I was reading about it and it led me to some thoughts I want to share.
The human being is a social one. S/he likes to be surrounded by family, friends and other formations like school mates, work buddies, etc. I once read that the greatest fear of many people – apart from the fear of dying – is that of performing in front of a group of other people. Why so? Because we are afraid of being expelled and rejected. This is probably a primal instinct, which stems from the fact that, for our ancestors, banishment from the tribe was tantamount to death. One could not survive alone for a long time, without the protection of the larger group.
Obviously, most of us are not living in tribes as our ancestors did, but we still build our tribes and formations to be in a safe space. Within the formation, everyone plays their specific role. And there it starts to get interesting, because that play depends on the trustworthiness of the other members in the sense of how much someone feels to be in good hands. The more one gets unconditional respect, love and appreciation, the more the person is able to show their very true personality. If the individual feels insecure, s/he will adapt behaviour to the group in such a way that rejection can be avoided as far as possible. We also try to find reinforcement in subgroups by gossiping about others and building up our ego by being part of that subgroup. We feel safer, when we connect with likeminded people, although I have to say that, in general, I don’t support gossiping.
Gossiping is all about the above topic. And one tends to feel better than others, by pointing out their weaknesses. Funnily, these topics often concern our own weaknesses, or they arise from jealousy. How often does one gossip about the freedom that someone takes for oneself?
It takes a lot of courage to be constantly honest in one’s personality. The fear of rejection has to be defeated and one has to expect to lose some so-called friends or even family members. But isn’t it worth it, that you can look in to the mirror, knowing, that you have nothing to hide? For me it does. And my experience is, that good people come into my life and I don’t feel rejected.
Thursday was state formation day. Every Indian is part of a state and part of the superordinate formation of India. Within the state formation, our small formations take place. My thoughts make me dream about freedom.
I had the freedom to be myself in a wonderful funny and welcoming group of my landlord’s kids’ friends this week and I also enjoyed the freedom to do the carpentry work for my sofa.
I wish you all had a happy State Formation Day.
(Simone Toni Weibel (47) is an independent artist, teacher and writer from Switzerland who has settled down in Dehradun.)
