The Tribe that Binds Us
Not long ago, my teenage son spent quite some time thinking that he wanted to be a YouTube gamer. He wanted to be a Minecraft influencer, somebody who could make other people happy with their entertaining videos while playing the game himself, rack up likes and sponsorships, and make money. Even before he was a teenager, he understood the concept of advertising online and that likes equated to money. At school, a sort of aptitude testing was done on all students in his grade, and his results pointing him towards app development. He took this news as evidence he could pivot into game development, even in the age of AI.
However, in his teenage years, he’s proclaimed that he wants to be a homesteader. Part of this might be born from the fact that his father and I have various hobbies and interests that overlap with what a current homestead may do at least partially. We have ceramics, gardening, canning and preserving, blacksmithing, fishing, and like to spend our family time out in nature. We like to camp and cook over fires and live with the seasons. Live each day with the sun in each night with the moon and stars.
When we ask our son why he wants to be a homesteader, it’s less about the actual activities and the being responsible for one’s livelihood and self, health and healing through perseverance and physical effort. Rather, it’s more about being away from society and other people. He wants control over who he is exposed to and who he exposes himself to. He knows he’ll have more priorities in his young adult years, time in which he’ll have to take care of himself and other living beings. For this reason, I think that he is thinking about his boundaries, what matters most to him, and knowing that the stresses of adulting can compound. He doesn’t want to add the stress of so many forced relationships, whether they be virtual or in person, onto himself and disrupt his balance.
He still watches YouTube gamers online and other videos. However, the language is getting a little bit R rated and we call him out on it. We haven’t heard, or overheard, any racist rhetoric, language, bigoted, or misogynistic references. Although he recently asked us questions about war crimes. Overall, he knows that the way we treat people online can reflect how we treat them in real life, and vice versa.
If there is a dividing line about how to socialize these days, it is wide, gray, and deeply wet. People drown in that dividing line.
Maybe he has heard this kind of devisive speech and we don’t know about it, maybe it is influencing his decision that being a homesteader could allow him to proclaim more independence over his daily life and also give him the power to decide who he spends time with, when, and for how long. Maybe he wants to be part of creating the tribe he will belong alongside and influence that is safe from the grey mote of indecisive socialization.
If it’s hard to find a tribe when you’re a preteen or young teenager, it’s definitely hard to find it when you are a young adult or an older adult. As we age, we have more choice over who we surround ourselves by, but at the same time we get into forced collaborations with other adults when we might share some things similar, such as employment status, education, neighborhood, or children’s activities. As a child, you’re usually surrounded by dozens if not hundreds of other individuals your own age. You are growing through the motions in fits and starts and sprints. In school, kids can commiserate over the same teacher, the same coach, the same bully, the same pretty girl or heart throb. There are more classes and clubs and organizations that kids can choose to be split even more into, and sometimes these groups also overlap making a possible tribe much more diverse.
But in adult land, we move away, we graduate, we get married, we start a new job, and inherit groups of people into our lives that we have very little in common. We are forced to latch onto small commonalities and conform at the same time, putting on displays of enjoyment and camaraderie in order to belong and stay dry of ostracization.
For a few of us there is very little pretending. We find it easy to find a tribe, and either happily stay neutral or enthusiastically embrace the concepts of the larger group. However, for many other others, it is difficult to maintain individuality, identity, and maintain an ethical construct when trying to have connection with others on a regular basis.
There’s been much written and much research done on the value of having connection with others and acknowledge that even self-isolation as a preferred living modality can shorten once lifespan. The concept of this is common sense. We would not have survived as a species if it wasn’t for group living situations. In those groups that we evolved to survive in, everybody was still an individual, there was a common purpose, but everyone had a different job. There’s even a theory that we may have differences in our sleep patterns and levels, including chronotypes that serve a survival benefit for the larger group. Having both light and heavy sleepers in a prehistoric group was protective. If everyone was in deep sleep every night at the exact same time, our large predators would probably pick up on this and find us easy targets when it came to a midnight snack.
A recent lecture I watched from the most recent ACLM conference cited a statistic that 83% of people DO want to exercise with others. They found that being with others like them, doing a similar activity, even if it was a new activity, was preferable. I do not disagree that research has found this statistic. It seems very plausible. What I also see is that 17% plausibly DO NOT want to exercise with others. Majority findings do not speak for everyone and can blind us to other possible healthy avenues for living.
These days finding a tribe is tough. Finding connection is even harder now than it ever has been. We are starting to recognize this in many towns and communities, employment settings, and educational settings. Organizations are starting to reinvent the in person experience. Killing two birds with one stone by joining a running or hiking club, group fitness class, community kitchen, AA, NA, or other group activity with a health benefit is a great option for some. However, not everybody is going to be served in the same way. For some it might increase stress, even increase the sense of social isolation, because sitting in the background gives a sense of not belonging, or not belonging well enough to be seen. And don’t get me started on groups that favor calling out the new person.
Finding a connection with others might be a smaller slice of the Lifestyle Medicine pie. It definitely has been given less attention and detail than diet, physical activity, and sleep. It is also the one with the most wiggle room. The pillar of connection encourages making new ones, but it also can be lenient in case those connections just don’t balance with the rest of the Health puzzle the person is trying to build. A person can have a tribe that is one or two people or one that is dozens or hundreds of individuals. The person with a tighter tribe probably has more people in their lives that are positively influencing their outcome.
It is said that for a child to succeed they need to have at least one charismatic adult in their life positively influence them and guiding them along. No matter if a kid comes from a household that is insecure financially, nutritionally, or environmentally, they can and most likely will have a better success rate if there is a constant parent, constant teacher, constant social worker, constant adult in their life to positively guide them through the stages of development they will need to go through to be an independent whole individual that can care for themselves and others. Not everyone of us has had this, and there will be plenty of future children and adults who have lacked this whom we will forever be trying to blame for their failures when it is not entirely their fault.
As adults we also need charismatic adults in our lives. We also need the positive influences that can guide us along as we circumnavigate the adulting and aging process. We also have the opportunity to be that a positive and charismatic adult in other people’s lives, both children and adults. I would advocate this be the center of an adult’s tribe. Find where you can be a positive influence and contribute to the ties that bind the whole group.
Tribes can be the positive influences on each other. They don’t need to be large. They don’t need to come from exercise classes, or club memberships, or religious institutions, workplaces, or neighborhoods.
Tribes can be gathered throughout life, kept like a charm on a piece of jewelry that hangs over the soul.
Adult tribe members can be a constance, living in each other’s backgrounds, coming into each other’s spheres regularly like a gentle TV drama or comfy blanket. Adult tribe members can also be people we only see when the time is right, like our favorite season or vacation spot.
Adult tribe members should also be our positive influence in a way that promotes healthy individuality, enhances well-being, and prolongs longevity rather than disrupts or shortens it.
Can a relationship be good and positive if it encourages behavior that calls for sacrifice of our mind and body without a benefit that is greater?
Can a relationship that has multiple levels of conformity be one that also allows for escape, forgiveness, partial membership, or even change?
Can close relationships also move at different paces?
We don’t need a constant group in our lives. Some of us get along just fine having control over the people in our lives and who is privileged enough to have our time and attention. That might come off as narcissistic to some, but it is a lifesaver and a boundary maker to others. If we are encouraged to have boundaries in our lives, we should also be able to have better control over what we feel will benefit us the most. At one point of our lives, we may benefit from having many constant close companions, at other times only a few. This is probably more in line with a natural order of aging. Lots of companions to help us find out who we really are, our personality and interest and purpose. Then as we have to whittle that down over the years of life, we end up at the end with more knowledge on what we want and who we want to share our time with.
Maybe my son is turning into an old soul. Just like me, maybe he wants to skip over the years and decades of life that are spent gathering intel on who is going to ultimately help us design ourselves. I honestly don’t mind his move from seeking out a life of virtual connection to a life of in person connections that might be a whole lot fewer but are by his own design. Maybe he’s realized it without realizing it, social media popularity puts a person into a hole that can be too deep to crawl out of. Maybe he know a bridge is more practical than a ladder. Maybe he wants to live in a future state where we have evolved into seeking out quality rather than quantity. Quality relationships over quantity. Quality of time and experiences and materials and ownership, rather than the cult of quantity that is nearing its zenith.