Reflections 6th February

Winter Walk, Little Eaton.

On my Mind

The idea of belonging has accompanied me most of this past week. We all have the need to belong, whether to a tribe, a location, an idea, or a movement – anything that defines us in a period of local and global turbulence, and somewhere we can seek refuge amongst those of like mind.

There are so many places we can choose to belong – the political right and left, conspiracy theories, geopolitical groupings, elites, victims, occupations, and numerous others that are becoming increasingly blended and combined such that we seem to develop energy without coherence of definition. I think it used to be simpler – less than a handful of generations ago the line I am descended from were, on one side, those who worked on the land within fifty miles of where I live, and on the other immigrant jewellers from the Netherlands who found a home in the jewellery quarter of Birmingham. Identities formed from tangible elements, people who lived amongst those like them a…