Belonging

The lack of my camera cable has forced me to remember those days when I blogged about…you know, opinions and stuff, rather than just What I Did Last Weekend. It was, after all, the main reason I started a blog in the first place (yeah, ‘cause I need more places in which to unload my opinion onto the world). But somehow lately I have become lazy. Any thoughts I have are fleeting things, either kept to myself or shared in emails in between tv-related ramblings.

And the other day I was linked to a new blog of a friend from university, and it shamed me. She writes regularly of her opinion on current affairs, friends, things that happen in her day-to-day life, tv adverts…everything, really. And while I don’t agree with everything she says, I feel small in my little picture-book blog by comparison.

Also, nothing very interesting has happened recently. Although I have a photo of my father to share when (if) I find my cable.

So…in reading said friend’s blog, anyway, I came across this line:

“I do wonder how I can hold these beliefs, how I can be in favour of killing foetuses and the seriously ill or the elderly, and how I can oppose killing murderers and rapists. Those are the contradictions in being a liberal....I just have to believe that somehow I'm right.”

And it made me think. Out of context, that perhaps seems more imbalanced than it is, and I don’t disagree with anything she’s saying, but it raised the question of ‘belonging’ (notice how I jumped at the chance to use that title…) to any labelled division of people.

Now, I do believe we need labels. To make life easier for all of us, for a start. When describing a person, it is so much better to be able to say of me ‘she’s a liberal Christian fantasy reader’ than to have to list every single opinion I have individually. Approximations through a combination of labelled stereotypes will do, in the majority of cases – there simply isn’t world enough or time for us all to know each other perfectly.

But when it comes to your own view of yourself, I don’t believe anyone should base themselves on a label. I don’t believe anyone should ever think it is sufficient to say ‘because I am a Y, I believe X’ and think no further. (I am uncomfortable enough with ‘I believe X, therefore I am a Y.’) In the case above – yes, those opinions appear contradictory. So why should it be alright to shrug and say ‘apparently I have contradictory opinions, but plenty of other people have them too, so that’s okay’? I don’t think it is. I think if there is one thing that we should never cease doing, it is questioning our own view of the world, understanding exactly why we believe what we do and, if necessary, changing those beliefs – but changing them based on personal experience and a separate appraisal every time, not en masse because you’ve decided to vote for a different political party this week.

What am I trying to say? I share my friend’s beliefs in the above case. And maybe I haven’t thought them through thoroughly myself yet either – but it doesn’t mean I don’t think I ought to (some day, when I get a respite from trying to work out if I believe in a soul). Her apparent decision to trust that other people have thought those beliefs through and that therefore they are fine just sticks in my throat. I am a fierce believer in independent thought – never believe anything just because other people do, however comfortable it may be. In the end, abdicating responsibility for your own beliefs can lead to you following causes that you wouldn’t be following of your own accord, because the lure of belonging to a community is too strong.

Again – what am I saying? On a small, everyday scale, I suppose it’s that I hope I am strong enough to be different to my friends, even those whose approval I most want. Let the schoolgirl response of attempting to chameleon myself into what I think will be an acceptable form be left years behind me.