Feb 24, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
Belonging is the most compelling question of the 21st century. Just look at the data. We have a record number of expats and immigrants across the world and those numbers are increasing every year. We also have the largest number of refugees, asylum seekers and...
Feb 18, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
Have you ever wondered what you can do to make the world a better place? Most of us want to do something positive, to help, to make a difference and yet, at the same time, we have this nagging feeling that one person will never be able to change anything. We feel...
Feb 10, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
Change is all around us and that means traditional ideas of belonging and how humans connect are being challenged. According to BBC Radio 3 host Philip Dodd, “Belonging is the most compelling cultural and political question of our time. Anywhere across Europe...
Feb 10, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
This started as a simple project in January 2014. A quiet search for a sense of belonging here in my fourth country, Australia. But like all significant projects it has changed me and over the months it has changed as well. I’ve become passionate about...
Jan 23, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
J’ai des amis à découvrir et beaucoup de choses à connaître Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Le Petit Prince Yesterday as I drove down the highway, I noticed lots of butterflies dancing in the air on the sides of the roads, over fields and buildings and above the cars. I...
Nov 18, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
A few months ago I met author Alain de Botton in Brisbane and asked him about belonging. Being a jet-lagged philosopher he wanted time to ponder this question and suggested I email him. I had been saving this quote, this nugget of belonging, and now that I’ve come...
Oct 21, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
Yesterday as I was driving my daughter to ballet, I put on some music by Francis Cabrel, which I hadn’t heard in a while. The French lyrics, the inflection, the flow of the phrases and the cadence of the words wove through me, lifting me up out of the car of suburbia...
Oct 10, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
Poetry has long been used to search out and understand who we are and our place in the world. Concepts and emotions are whittled to their essence by the selection and sparsity of words, by sheeting together thoughts in a unique way so we are forced to slow down and...
Sep 24, 2014 | Belonging, Writing With Refugee Kids
”Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen, Anthem Last week, as part of my journey to understand belonging, I went to see a place with a...
Sep 22, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
Pico Iyer’s TEDGlobal talk on the evolution of the meaning of home is a sonata to the idea of belonging and is particularly useful for those of us who are part of what he calls the ”great floating tribe,” or who don’t live in the country of our...
Sep 20, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
Here, in a few beautiful sentences, Australian writer Lisa Southgate unknots the messy shoelaces of belonging and home. Perhaps the feeling of home is as unattainable as a feeling of real belonging especially when so many of us are part of what Pico Iyer calls the...
Sep 18, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
After months of working on my belonging project here in my fourth country, I’ve realized that belonging is fundamental to finding meaning in life. It’s such a basic human need that it pops up everywhere, even in my IQ, and yours. Yet in this age of individualism and...
