Discovering Our Interconnectedness.
My Identity
I am an only child who was adopted. I have had a wide range of life experiences. I double majored in political science and sociology in undergrad. I worked for the state of Texas as a legal caseworker for Child Protective Services. I have worked in church ministry and gotten a Masters of Divinity. I have moved and lived in 7 different states in my lifetime. Have held the hand of seniors as they have passed away, I have held a 10 day old baby boy who was an orphan as he took his last breath. I am in a multi-cultural and cross racial marriage. I have lived in the south and the north. I have traveled to several different countries. My lived experienced have been vast and varied. My identity could be defined by all these things, certainly my perspective on the world haas been defined by all of these things. It would be easy to sink into a feeling of letting my life experiences define who I am and to isolate me from others.
Connected Yet Isolated
In our world of increasing connectedness it would seem that we would be more connected than we have been through out history and yet isolation and loneliness are on the rise. We have begun to fall into groups with more specific identifiers and limit our connection to the diversity around us resulting more division than connection. In his book Identity, Francis Fukuyama describes this phenomenon.
“But if the logic of identity politics is to divide societies into ever smaller, self regarding groups. It is also possible to create identities that are broader and more integrative. One does not have to deny the potentialities and lived experiences of individuals to recognize that they can also share values and aspirations with much broader circles of citizens. Erlebnis can aggregate into Erfahrung; lived experience can become just plain experience. So while we will never get away from identity politics in the modern world, we can steer it back to broader forms of mutual respect for dignity that will make democracy more functional.” (1)
Our Interconnected World
When we are divided we are at our weakest individually and as a society. Our identities are unique and full of lived experiences that will likely not match anyone else’s really because they will live theirs from their unique perspective. This is how we can learn from each other and lean on one another’s unique perspective and experiences. These are not the things that should divide us into groups. When we begin to see each other as divinely created human beings with dignity and unique gifts and purpose we begin to see how connected we are and how inter connected our world is. In our uniqueness, in our diversity there is strength. We are interconnected because we are beloved, created, children of a loving God from ever corner of the city, every continent on this earth. We are humans and in that we are united in our common identity. Together is how we move mountains, shape futures, and move through this world in peace.
1. Fukuyama, Francis. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. (New York: Picador, 2018), xiii.165-166.
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