Are we boll weevils? - home part 2

Remember the song about the boll weevil? "He's a-lookin' for a home.." which is why he devastated the cotton crop.

 

 I attended the boarding school I mentioned in my last post for nine years, which means that for over half of each year I didn't live at home (i.e. my parents' house) but had to seek something homely, somewhere I could feel I belonged, at the school. In a sense, it meant that for nine years I was from two places, not one. 

EM Forster described the poet Cavafy as "standing absolutely motionless, at a slight angle to the universe." I think many of us know that feeling, and I've come to feel now that maybe most of us feel that at times; whatever reason we may locate for such feelings, it may simply be part of us. 

There are people who seem very good at making themselves at home wherever they are, and others who never seem entirely at ease with their dwelling, their social setting, their environment. They are perhaps not at home in themselves, suffering from what RD Laing* called "ontological insecurity," uncertainty as to the reality of their existence in the world. 

"Ontological insecurity refers, in an existential sense, to a person's sense of “being” in the world. An ontologically insecure person does not accept at a fundamental level the reality or existence of things, themselves, and others. In contrast, the ontologically secure person has a stable and unquestioned sense of self and of his or her place in the world in relation to other people and objects." ("Encyclopedia of Identity," Jackson and Hogg)

Seems to me the contrast is over-stated. We can swing between one state and the other, and I reckon most of us are, at times, or all the time, boll weevils, lookin' for a home. Wanting to feel at home, in themselves, wherever they are. And material well-being may not of itself be a final answer.

Perhaps its that searching impulse that makes us love alternative homes, hideaways, tree-houses, sheds, dens. Small boys I know love making a den, then they tend to sit in it for a bit, lose interest, and wander off. They've made a little homeliness for themselves, then they move on. Whereas it seems slightly more grown-up boys often stay in a shed, a personal base, for rather longer....

It may be that this den-making, this search for an extra bit of home, however content or well-balanced we may be, is a relatively superficial manifestation of a more profound need. 

A home is after all, where you belong. The need to belong, emotionally, intellectually, instinctively, is powerful. People will sometimes land up not in a nice homely cotton boll, but in something dangerous and destructive. 

OK I'm not going to attack "religion" now, but I will just distinguish between religions (social structures, codes and commandments) and spiritual needs - a conflicted word for me, "spiritual," but let it stand for now. 

Let's say a sense of profundity, connectedness, belonging. Established religions may supply that spiritual need for many people - and for others it is not at all what they need, if they are to feel connected to something greater than themselves. And maybe that connectedness is a common and profound need.



*Laing, if you don't already know this, was an influential and controversial figure in 1960s psychiatry and libertarian left thinking. His theories about mental illness were - radical, and dismissed by many in the field.