The Power of Feeling a Sense of Belonging
As part of our welcoming into this world, we are granted citizenship to the country in which we are born into. It’s kind of boring that we didn’t get to choose, right? However, as we grow up, our worldview is broadened and our relationships with others are deepend. Depending on how profoundly we feel connected to others, either far or near, we can now choose the answer to this question — do we identify ourselves as global or local citizens. Although feeling connected to people worldwide increases our empathy for one another, I believe it is important to identify as a local citizen because it leads us to feel a stronger sense of belonging which may result in a stronger sense of responsibility.
In fact, I experienced that myself. The majority of people I follow on social media are Hispanic. In consequence to that, I come across several posts of people bringing attention to family members who have been deported by ICE officers. I usually take time to say some prayers and maybe repost to raise awareness. However, when the same thing happened to a girl’s father I knew from school, I felt the need to go above and beyond. I not only did those things, but I included resources so that other people knew how to help AND I donated to the family to help pay their bills as well. I hardly knew the girl so why did I do this for her and not the others?
It was because we share a sense of belonging. We share a community together. Although I hardly knew her, we could relate. We both came from immigrant families, we share a common tongue, and we have the same love for our city as one another. When I hear the police sirens wailing at night, she hears them too. When our house celebrates as Mexico moves onto the next round of the Fifa World Cup, so does hers. I’m not too sure about the psychology behind it, but I felt a sense of responsibility to help my fellow community member. When people feel connected, whether it be through blood, shared experiences, or so on, they are more prone to respond to a cry for help. It is a bit harder to do that with someone who is across the world than with someone who is right in your backyard. This is the sense of belonging that develops more strongly when people identify as a local citizen.
Admittedly, this may cause some to question the extent to which people can have empathy towards the people they can’t relate to. Therefore, some may ask if lack of compassion is the aftermath of identifying locally. When one has closed off their mind to the needs of people outside of their map-drawn borders, it may cause an entire community to suffer because they are being neglected. Whereas, if someone had an inclusive mindset, those communities could help one another in their troubling times.
Although I can see how that argument may arise, I see the situation in a different light. Affiliating with a certain community does encourage you to feel a certain responsibility to help that community but it does not necessarily discourage someone from helping others. Local citizenship gives you motivation, not a cap on compassion. More clearly stated, identifying with a local citizenship does not limit the extent to which a person can outreach to the cries of distant communities.
As a matter of fact, identifying with the local community even has the potential to perform indirect, positive, global impact. In other words, the actions you perform at a local level can also be impactful on a global scale. For example, to combat climate change many people look at what they can do within their own communities to help resolve this issue. You can pick up trash here, you can vote for certain policies here, but you need to understand that it all starts HERE, in your local community. Identifying as a local citizen can also create a more effective attitude towards tackling the issue. By taking this global issue of climate change and bringing it down to the community level, people are more likely to respond to the call to action since they feel a sense of responsibility to their community. It also reduces the sense of hopelessness because the issue and the steps to resolve it don’t feel so daunting.
It’s reasonable to worry that tackling issues as an independent community may cause them to better themselves, even at the expense of others. Afterall, this has happened before. This could come in the form of burning down forests in an attempt to switch plastic products to biodegradable bamboo, such as straws and toothbrushes. This happens because those communities feel disconnected from others, therefore, they don’t feel the need to claim responsibility for the consequences they’ve caused in distant lands. Despite this being an unfortunate possibility, that is where local responsibility comes into play again. Pushing to pass policies that won’t allow that to happen is one way of taking local action to have a grander impact. Currently, people host climate protests in their own cities to hopefully catch the attention of officials and get their policies enforced. Like in the example provided, It is important for us to identify as local citizens but have a global perspective in mind.
Maybe “stretching ourselves too thin” was a concept developed as an excuse for people who don’t want to partake in all the world’s problems. Or perhaps “picking our battles wisely” was wisdom passed down to encourage people to focus on the issues they’ve prioritized. It’s time for people to take a deep reflection of what motivates them to answer a cry for help. Should we all feel the same sense of responsibility to help for the troubles other people are having or find important? How do you sort out which of these issues are worthy or just needy enough of our time and energy? Ultimately, you’ll find that most people are more prone to help those they feel they belong to but that shouldn’t limit us from extending our hand out to others. Identifying as a local citizen can give us that sense of belonging to be encouraged to help.
