At times, our culture seems to worship alienation. Our heroes are the “outsiders” of this world, those without a “place to belong.” Beginning with the existential loners who have dominated Western literature from Camus and Kerouac, through our fascination with “knights” who hide behind masks and darkness in a cave full of gadgets, or “space pirates” with no allegiance to anyone but themselves, we revel in a sense of being solitary and different. And if someone seems to interfere with our quest for self, we can easily break contact with such troublesome characters by refusing to return their messages and claiming that it’s necessary for the sake of our “personal growth.”
Living in a remote, indigenous Mayan town, I found all my cherished cultural values completely reversed. One of the words most commonly heard in daily conversation or seen written upon civic announcements was tinamit, which means “community.” In Mayan society, a sense of community was everything. The goal was not to detach oneself from the collective whole, but to be a part of it.
It begins with one’s family. No one spoke of “breaking free” from family ties to forge one’s own destiny. An individual path was never entirely separate from the collective path. While one might temporarily go to university or take a job somewhere in “the big city,” it was always understood that one’s tinamit was one’s home, and one would return there in the course of time.
Of course, we live in a transient society. The Maya do not. If you asked an average citizen of a Mayan tinamit how long her or his family had been in the town, there would be no answer. They have always been there. Our own cultural yen to establish a sense of individuality by moving permanently to a different place where we don’t know anyone and can start afresh would not have made any sense to them.
Rather than feeling stifled by the bonds that tie them to community and family, they seemed to possess a sense of security which people in our own society lack. There is always a place to go, a place for food and shelter, a place where you will be accepted despite the ups and downs of your personal life. There is always a sense of home, of belonging. Though many people lacked all but the most basic rudiments of survival, there was an assurance that everything would be all right if everyone—family and friends and neighbors—all pulled together to get the job done.
Even the concept of spirituality is marked by the sense of community. Whether through the influence of Christian monasticism or through involvement with various Eastern religions, many of us have been trained to believe that “retreat from the world” is the apex of the spiritual path. The monastery in the clouds, the cave on the top of a mountain.... There is a perception that such a refuge would be a far better thing than involvement in the mucky, murky world down below.
In Mayan society, such notions of spirituality do not apply. The “spiritual guide” is just that—a guide. To be a guide, one must have people who seek guidance. The spiritual guide is a fully engaged member of the tinamit, with a spouse, children, and everything else that creates a sense of belonging. A shaman or Daykeeper is never a recluse, meditating alone at the far edge of town. That would be considered anti-social behavior rather than spirituality. A shaman is one who can counsel and advise others on the path of spiritual harmony because she or he also strives to live such a path, one that is thoroughly entwined with the community at large—the Maya would probably say “interwoven” rather than “entwined,” since many of their metaphors come from the art of weaving.
We, in our psychological and spiritual isolation, often experience a passion for traditional cultures. We may not know why we have the longing to be part of a different or “exotic” world—we only know that the longing is there. Most such cultures function, as the Maya do, on a principle of inclusiveness where the whole is greater than its parts and where all the members of the community share a common bond and a sense of belonging. Is this, perhaps, what we are really searching for in our endless quests?
Are we simply looking for a place to belong?
