The Idea of Community and Belonging

I am currently in Mainz-Finthen Germany to visit family, but even more importantly, to celebrate my mother's 50th birthday.  Finthen is a village of approximately 14,000 people, a few km away from the provincial capital, Mainz.  On a bike excursion  with my grandfather today, I would realize just how provincial my ancestral homeland truly is. As we went along our usual route, my grandfather decided to  take a different path home and turned into a gated trailer park. Previously I had only biked passed the place and understood it as a vacation destination because of the lakes that the trailers are settled around.  However, I was astonished to find that these were in fact permanent homes that gave the impression of such overt distance to the outside world that I came to realize just how absurdly contrasted lives even in the western world can be.

For the first time I saw flagpoles waving the German flag shamelessly. Flags are virtually nonexistent in the area where my granparents live.  German society is still largely unprepared to demonstrate their nationality openly.  Nevertheless, a sense of belonging in such a community seems to be the guiding purpose of its existence that fills a spiritual gap that their economic position may not fill. Nonetheless, perhaps even more vital to such a community than nationality, was the unquestionable allegiance to football clubs. Waving underneath, and on rare occasion even above the German flag, the banner of the household's team flew proudly.

I am evaluating an entire community simply from the brief encounter upon a bicycle and therefore all I say are mere presumptions. Yet despite my observations and the apparent economic condition, the atmosphere of the community felt content. It was clean, there was no evidence of graffiti or other vandalism, and on first glance the people seemed happy.  Perhaps this is because, above any other belonging, lies that for the community.  The community supports itself. I feel that people who live in such a secluded cove can find a much greater sense of contentment than anyone living in a city. The pace of life is slow and the people are friendly.  It is in fact reminiscent of a tribal society. They are of a greater clan (Germany), but their loyalty is always to their family and community. I feel that in such a society, cases of depression are far lower because the elements that create depression do not exist.  Some of the people living there might not even do so because of economic reasons but perhaps even spiritual reasons because they simply cannot follow with the world outside the trailer park gates.