A big family get together and everyone doesn’t go without tensions.
We step into such gathering like onto a court room. Or rather a field court.
When we go there we go with fear; what would be the majority verdict about me?
Already we are full of fear about what would be my place and space within the collective.
Would i get space? Would i be related to enough, or ignored?
So each one is entering anxious: am i going to behaving ok?
And in the gathering itself everyone is in intense in self-examination:
Do i speak enough? Should I come in now, to enlarge my territory? Or is it the wrong time because then it will be conceived as rude?
Did i answer him as i should?
For us being part of a gathering is not only an uncertain situation, but we enter with anxiety, afraid to be pushed down the social ladder.
Afraid from being humiliated or not getting the space we feel we should get.
For us, being part of a gathering is just like getting a social verdict, the bottom line with which I go out is: was I accepted or rejected?
Who is less friendly with me today and why? Why is she is not looking at me today?
And status wise: everyone is very sensitive concerning their status positing within this gathering. Was I pushed to the bottom? Or was I lucky and this time my status was higher? And popularity: was I related to the least or the most?
And could even be that you got this time less attention than the other times, and it might be that it even escaped your awareness, but you felt it and when you went out you felt lousy not knowing why.
If yoy don’t stand someone, should you show him by non-relating, or should you be hypocrite?
If someone is aggressive or making you small, should you react? Should you swallow? Or should you retaliate? And if yes, in what way?
And if you feel ignored, what should you do about it? Should you push yourself in forcefully?
This is what’s on the mind of the participants, and what makes them feel good or bad in the end.
This terrible tension could only happen in a group gathering, never in the intimacy of a two dialogue.
Evryone is in constant comparison to others, who is a better social position? And especially what is his Sociometric positioning in the current social group. If we liken the sociometric poisoning of the members like dots in a circle, then everyone does not want to be pushed to the peripheries of the circle.
All this is especially emphasized between large family gathering, in which troubled history and residues complicate matters further.
Gabriel