Whatever world we live in I think we all fabricate for ourselves a smaller, tribal world to live in. It serves as a place of safety, nurture, and refuge. It can be a circle of compatible friends that are emotionally comforting.
The dark side of small worlds is that if they are too small you can get to feel hemmed in and want to escape. You have to be able to have the small world with the freedom to step out of it any time you feel the need.
It's in the small worlds that one has the biggest sense of obligation because there are fewer folks
With my particular church fellowship, that fellowship serves as a small world. It's a pretty sparse membership so that world is small indeed.
A small world can have all the comfort and frustrations of the family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Each must decide how to deal with that, escape or embrace. There are costs to both paths. I would like to figure out how to minimize the costs of embracing the small world and maximize the benefits.
A small world leads to protected childhoods and youths frequently unprepared for the wider world and it demands and temptations. I'm all for protecting children but we need to also raise our youth the be complete adults.
Even though we think we are ready and willing to live in a small world, life (or something) sometimes kicks us out unwillingly.
If the small world is large enough it can be a fairly complete experience. Some are willing to fit in and stay in completely. They have no concern or desire about whether they might be missing something. The small world is a safe refuge in a larger, scarier universe.
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