Spring is in the air! It’s a new dawn and a new day. A time for cleaning up and clearing out and I’m not just talking about closets. I’m talking about life! After two pandemic years and a long cold winter here in the Berkshires, it’s the perfect time to take stock of our lives: Where are we? Where are we going? How will we get there? And most crucially, with whom? 

The last two years have changed everything. Our world is not the same and we are not the same. And this makes it the perfect time to a look at our tribal support system and assess whether it still works (if it ever really worked) for our new reality or is it time to shake things up?

This type of spring-cleaning requires more than a feather duster. It demands  tough questions: Who is in our lives? Do they want us to succeed, or do they want to clip our wings and keep us close? Who is genuinely supportive and who sabotages our best efforts? And, of course, the converse is also true: Do we help others to be their best selves or are we fearful that they may progress, outgrow us, and leave us behind?

To answer these emotionally charged questions, it’s helpful to look at our tribal history because as we evolve our relationship with tribal affiliation and unconscious devotion to tribal mindsets, and patterns of behavior, also changes.

Historically tribal membership was determined by geography, culture, socioeconomics, race, religion and so on. Up until a few hundred years ago, few were the people who traveled far and fewer still the people who assimilated into whole new patterns of loyalty and behavior. The main mission of the tribe was to keep it intact, there’s physical safety in numbers after all, and the individual was a cog in a big wheel. Individual hopes, dreams and life purpose were not even considered. This is one of the reasons that saints, for example, faced such difficulties fitting in, even at times becoming martyrs like Saint Agnes because they refused to “go along to get along” which threatened the status quo. And tribal retribution could be swift and deadly taking the form of shame, ostracization and even death. Threatening the tribes’ stability was not for the faint of heart.

We may have come a long way in the last few centuries, but our fear of survival is ever present. One result of this is we may find the people around us aren’t always supportive of our growth and progress. Even a simple thing like losing weight can be threatening because it puts an uncomfortable spotlight on their own struggles with bettering themselves.

Now, as global citizens adapting to monumental change, the threads of connectivity are being re-woven in new and different ways and tribal containers are expanding to accommodate this new world. Suddenly we may find ourselves identifying more readily with people thousands of miles away than with folks on the other end of the sofa.

This new reality is asking much of us. Principally, what kind of world do we want to live in? Considering that the very fabric and quality of this world starts with our tribal affiliations, by examining who we surround ourselves with, and why, is a powerful place to start. By creating tribal affiliations beyond fixed mindsets with those who genuinely support our growth and progress and whose growth and progress we support in return, we become co-creators of the kind of world we want. A more thoughtful world where we reimagine the concept of tribe to better suit the times and our evolving minds. A world where tribal constructs, built on so much more than safety, encompass kindness, equality, and inclusion.