This Morning 5/10/12 - Ties

The Unbreakable Tie?

When do you know when its time to go?
When do you know when you've done all you can?
When do you know when no matter how hard you try, it won't make a difference?
When do you know when what you're saying falls on deaf ears?

We tie ourselves to people through family, through religion, through employment, through causes, through love for each other and hate for others.  We make ourselves part of a community through these liaisons.  Our DNA is built on community.  We are not a species which survives as lone tigers; we group like gorillas, geese, and mice.

There is a time though when one must break from a community one is associated with in order to thrive.  The very community which once nurtured sometimes become a burden and weight around the ankle - a tie that holds one back and won't allow for growth and expansion of the individual.  The question then becomes how does breaking the tie affect the community - the greater nesting place of the many.

Does the individual's happiness and expansion trump the cohesion of a group?

A group is a circle.  A circle is endless and beginningless.  A circle, a group, or a community can be small or large in terms of people.   If the circle is to thrive, there must be a passing on of traditions which have been the cohesive element of the collective group.  For one to hold back teaching those traditions as the "leader," the facilitator, the priest, or even as the boss, is to risk the disintegration of the community.

As well, for those keepers of the traditions to assume that one is not capable of carrying those traditions because they come from a different tradition or integrate other traditions is to practice a type of sectarianism within their group.

There are good reasons to carry traditions as they have been taught.  But there are other traditions, valuable and harmonious, which can add to a tradition because the people have expanded and the time is different.

We must allow for breath.  We must live our lives within and separate from our groups, expanding and enlivened; not live our lives as a snapshot of yore.  We must come back to the group without the intention of taking something, but with the intention of giving something living inside of us as individuals to help the group expand and live and breathe.