People who need people

About a month ago, at a conference in Brussels I made a new friend. She was helping out as a photographer at the conference and I was there as a volunteer so we started chatting. I immediately took a liking to her, we exchanged details and a week later I was sitting in her flat having a great conversation over tea and croissants.

We talked about how we felt about living in Brussels. She is a relative newcomer and neither her nor her boyfriend had any previous ties with Belgium. I have been here for 4 years and I am married to a Belgian so my take on things was slightly different. It is funny how we each see similar experiences through different lenses! Eva liked Brussels a lot but found it hard to settle at first because she was not sure where and how she and her boyfriend were supposed to fit in. Not many of her countrymen live here and looking for friends based on nationality was out of the question.  Belgians were even harder to spot and whenever she tried to meet them through work or volunteering, other expats or “half-Belgians” would show up. So she finally got used to the idea that it was the expat community that she would settle into. But who was this “international community” in Brussels? Could it be well defined? Did its members know they formed a community? These questions we discussed and could not find clear answers.

On my part, I was content to claim that I felt part of the international community in Brussels and therefore, I assumed, it existed. My closest friends- Austrians, Canadians, Germans, Spaniards and many others could all identify with the community, I claimed. We had many things to differentiate us as a group from other communities: we speak various languages-including French (but not Dutch) and our common language is always English. On weekends we go to Café Belga, the Flagey market, a salsa or yoga class and the occasional Sunday brunch. On Christmas holidays we always go back to visit our families. So, “there you go”, I said to Eva- “we ‘internationals’ are clearly a community”! Eva was not that easily convinced. She rightly pointed out that what I was defining was my group of friends and not the whole international community in Brussels. This last group is much more elusive and attempts to define it clearly are next to impossible. It is composed of very different individuals coming to Brussels with a wide variety of attitudes and expectations. Some really enjoy hanging out with their countrymen and are a bit nostalgic for their countries, others are happy to forget their nationality- at least temporarily. Some are single; others already have their own families. Some worked for the European Commission, others for big corporations; some are freelance workers always on the go; others are stay-at-home mums.

And that brings me to the actual concept of community. It is obvious that we all need a sense of community and belonging. Living in Brussels will not bring an exception of that universal need. Human connections and social capital are very good for our well-being and very useful for finding work or getting through tough times. But it is not necessarily the belonging to a loosely defined international community that will help us feel more connected to a place. What really makes us connect with each other and with the place itself is the fact that we continue to organise, participate and collaborate in activities through which people- of any background- can connect in a specific place and time. It can be through volunteering, a marathon, a charity, a workshop or any activity we can invent. And now we have a new opportunity. The Open Kitchen idea is great because it allows anyone (will YOU do it?) the initiative to open their home and invite new people, who will share a meal, a conversation and let themselves be entertained by a local artist. It allows us to really SEE each other and CONNECT on new levels, independently from the confines of clearly defined communities.  We can just relax and be “people who need people”. Fostering new human connections and valuable exchanges with others, while living in Brussels, is the way to go. And who knows, maybe one day, we can say without a doubt that what we have here is truly a community.

(Post originally written for open-kitchen.eu)