Finding who we belong with and where we need to be is in many ways a matter of choices with an eye on our fate. I mean fate in the sense that our family, friends, peers and community combined with the actual physical place we live and move in the world all determine what will happen to us. This is why we should view our life in terms of who we are surrounded by and where we call home as a series of choices, recognizing that we have to live with the family we are given and the place we were born, but we don’t have to stay with them or there if in doing so we are not allowed to be who we are. If we build this kind of awareness of family, friends, peers, and place as our reality and central to our identity, but not necessarily who we want to stay with or where we want to be, then we can make the kinds of choices that reflect who we are and where we really belong.

If you know that you are with the people and in the place you want to be then you are blessed. Of course, there are many who don’t have the resources, support or mindset to consider the option to leave family, friends, and home behind, striking out on another path. But this absence of choice doesn’t mean they don’t want to have the choice to do so and make a move as well. Once we make the choices to start a family, locate a community, take care of ourselves and others and build a life, the ability to choose and move becomes increasingly difficult because we become committed and accountable to others. We are obligated to one another and this means we have to choose to be together, leave each other, treat ourselves and others with integrity and a strong sense of accountability. These choices involving family, friends, peers, and place, help shape how our bodies and minds will literally react over time. In other words, our total well-being is a result of the choices we make through who and what we are given and where we want to be. Whether we make the effort to recognize them or not, choices are a binding tribal force.

(To explore further how maintaining social ties and finding community matter read an article by James Crabtree and Nicholas A. Christakis from Prospect titled “Let’s all be friends.” Check out Matt Sesow’s artwork.)