Unrooted

 

As an Aussie Gen X girl, I was slow to realise that being unrooted was possibly my problem. 

Australia is a young nation as far as British and European settlers are concerned. While millions of people around the world are comfortably rooted in their ancient settings and traditions that extend back to the year dot, we are a nation descended from a whole lot of restless wanderers. Some were outright crooks who had no choice but to come here. (I've met descendants of convicts hailing from the east coast or Tasmania.) But others were escaping from intolerable situations, which was the case with my South Aussie ancestors. Some of them were fleeing religious persecution in Germany, while the majority were from the British Isles and simply wanted to end serious poverty and make a fresh start. All the settlers had basically one thing in common. They were disgruntled folk in desperate straits fed up with their backgrounds.

So to put it bluntly, this hot, scorched land which mapmakers have set at the bottom of the world hasn't had time to twine its roots deeply into many of us white Aussies yet. It's only been a matter of a few hundred years. Our forebears simply lobbed here and started winging it incredibly recently in the grand scheme of things. I remember as a school kid being very envious of fellow students of more recent ethnic backgrounds who still had strong ties to their international food, costumes and traditions. Whenever I asked my mother about ours, I was told quite cheerfully that we are Australians and don't really have any. That didn't seem to bother her but disappointed me immensely.  

It's not just my background but my era that strips meaning from my life. We 21st century westerners live in an automated, increasingly digital  and computerised world. The generations just a few back from mine are the first who had no necessity to get up close and personal with the land for basic subsistence. I grew up knowing all we need is in the supermarket. From time to time we hear reports of some modern kids who don't even realise where their fruit, vegetables and meat come from beyond the packaging. I remember my own kids flinching when they discovered tiny feathers or flecks of chook poop on our free range eggs. Even this ease of being fed is a meaning stripper, when we compare our lot with times gone by. 

And we belong to a world where we are now encouraged to become anything and everything that takes our fancy. Being born at the end of a string of professionals who pass down a family livelihood to their children is greatly a thing of the past. On the surface this seems amazingly liberating, because ambition is limitless and nothing can theoretically stop us from becoming whatever we please. Yet when you think about it, this freedom is also a potential meaning stripper, leaving us uprooted like dandelion seeds. Especially those of us who fail to make a decent go of whatever we set our hearts on. 

So there I was, the youngest kid in a family born toward the latter end of the 20th century; an unrooted soul if ever anyone was. No family traditions, no real ties to the Aussie landscape, no generational occupation to instill pride and identity in me, no need to develop the patience of a green thumb just to survive, and no good reason to be aware of how my food comes to me. Just an untethered child left to float along and make her own random decisions with nothing tangible to grasp. I'm sure many others can relate to me here. It's hard to wrap our heads around this sort of emptiness while we're in it, but perhaps there's a very good reason for those vague feelings of restlessness and depression we can't account for in our youth. 

I recently read Sarah Wilson's latest book, This One Wild and Precious Life, and instantly got her drift. Sarah Wilson wrote that a major problem with our era is not feeling necessary. She goes on to describe how technology imposes a disconnected feeling. 'The moral aloneness of our guard rail free culture makes very little of what we actually do or care about seem important.' 

So what are we to do when we're a generation of emotionally disengaged sleepwalkers? Or when we feel more like dandelion seeds floating in the wind than necessary, meaningful craftspeople of our own lives?

Sarah Wilson suggests that we stay informed about the state of the world and never stop caring about the small stuff, such as returning texts, ditching bottled water in favour of metal bottles from home, shunning single use coffee cups and picking up our litter. Those automatic choices which take a moment are actually infused with meaning, when we stop to reflect.

But what else? Having identified this general malady of unrootedness while reading her book, I wanted to think of a couple of suggestions of my own. Here they are, for what they're worth. As I've said, I've identified myself as much a casualty of unrootedness as many others in our era, so I'm open to hearing more.

1) Decide on something meaningful to you and stick to it, no matter how it seems to be going over with everyone else. For me that might include writing this stuff out, writing in general, acknowledging good material that I've read and passing it on. In recent years I've homeschooled my three kids, which seemed like a very meaningful move, given their temperaments and the current school system. 

2) Research your background as much as possible. I actually benefited from my Dad's decision to do this very thing, once he was retired. He asked me to type his notes for him, which brought to light several British ancestors from Ireland and Scotland who were actually very brave and resourceful people. We Aussies are essentially unfamiliar with the land where we hail from, but learning these things is a step in the right direction and helps that feeling of disconnect dissipate. 

3) Consider spirituality. I didn't have this in my early years, since my parents had pulled the plug on a very mind-controlling sect from their past. Back then, Sunday mornings were just another opportunity to watch telly. But as a teenager, with the help of the books I read, I started researching my Christian background and realised it wasn't a matter of discovering something brand new, but of grafting myself back in to something ancient, true and vital I'd lost hold of.

4) Surround yourself with symbols. I've always been drawn to necklaces and key rings that depict the Tree of Life. Perhaps that's an irony suggesting that I craved for good, sound roots I didn't realise I'd grown up without.  

What would you add to this list? Can you relate to my reflection on unrootedness in any way? What works for you?