Greetings community, I come to share this reflection that has emerged today in the morning and I could write it down on the cell phone, now I transcribe them.
What does it mean to be part of a place?
Human beings, since we stopped being nomads, we have been looking for a place to settle and these places, our homes, in the progressive time and from its variable conditions, have caused a concrete culture to be produced and with this, some traits determined, personal and that seem to make some people more hospitable, others more cold, others more teasing and so on and so on.
It will not be our question to analyze what modifies what, if the environment and the conditions of the environment or the cultural features or maybe all at once. At this moment, it is time to analyze the concept of belonging as the symbolic thing that every human being has to touch, either because one has been raised in a place and at that time experienced the sweet closeness with the external or maybe because when one grows, it ends up needing to feel part of a place, of features that serve us as a collective identity, of a place, who knows ...
This is the case of an area in which I live and to which I believe I belong: Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) and more specifically to the province of Ciudad Real. For that reason I have chosen to go to the texts that link my belonging to this concrete land with the book of Santiago Arroyo Serrano "Thinking la Mancha". In it, an anthology of texts that give shape and content to the symbolic concept of being part of this earth is made. I, at this point, will focus on the introduction of the author who gives a few touches of his perception, both aesthetic and existential "Ser Manchego". Although just arrived at this point we find the difficulty associated with trying to define what is Castilla-La Mancha, since its formation is recent (1982) and has undergone major changes.
"In this place, the absence of boundaries in the territory generates a great tear and, in turn, multiple ways to solve it. The people of La Mancha always have an answer at hand to solve the great existential problems, an incessant thought that we see reflected in its maximum expression in some of the texts we present [...] We talked about La Mancha without ever defining it, because a definition would exhaust its meaning, in addition to the great difficulties that exist to define a feeling, such as love, as pleasure, as sadness. Being from La Mancha is a way of life. Beyond the differentiation in speech, in customs, in dress, La Mancha has a special genius, something close to the land that makes the most observant travelers think. Like Manchego's own horizon that seems to never end, it's better that way "Arroyo Serrano, Santiago; Pensar La Mancha, Ed. Public Company Don Quijote de la Mancha 2005, Ciudad Real, 2007.
Is belonging to a place just emotional? Are there symbols that make us the way we are? or rather, traditions that differentiate us from each other and, therefore, give wealth to the parts of a common area called a country?
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