Back when my grandparents were my age, life was a nice structured combination of social institutions that formed the framework for how you behaved, thought, dressed, who your friends would be, what you'd cook, where you'd live, who you'd date and when you'd get married. OK, so my grandma was 25 in the 1940's, I might be stretching it a bit, but there was a lot more social structure back then.
My parents are members of the Bellerive Yacht Club in Tasmania, and it has been a major part of their lives as long as I can remember. The Club provides its members with a marina, a bar, footy tipping, family nights, all sorts of functions and generally a place and a group where members feel they 'belong'. Even now (7 years after moving interstate) I can walk into the Club and people will know me and say g'day. As a child, the Club determined a lot of the structure of my life - Wednesday night twilight races, Friday night dinners, Saturday and Sunday races, countless Mother's Day lunches, my Father's 50th birthday party, my Grandfather's wake was held there and his picture still hangs in the hallway, and most importantly I learnt never wear a hat in a bar (or else you'll have to shout the whole bar)!
One of the biggest changes I experienced when moving states was the loss of social institutions/groups to guide my way. I was away from my family, school group, my pony club, my parent's yacht club and everything I knew. While it was great that this new beginning meant I had to work out who I was, this authenticity came at a cost - the comfort and security of belonging to a community and understanding the prescribed norms. I think this angst might be true for many of my generation who move out of home and away from everything they know, every generation has had to go out and forge it's place in the world, but the disconnect is far greater now - we're not in Kansas anymore!
In an attempt to appease my fears at being totally out of place and out of order, last year I signed up for 'ettiquette school', which is apparently enjoying a significant rise in enrollments - possibly due to this 'disconnection angst'. Thankfully, etiquette school simply confirmed I was OK, instead of telling me I was horribly badly mannered!
Over the past few years I've created my own network of social groups to form the framework for my life - my 'urban family', work groups, volunteer groups, steak night groups, girl's night groups, meditation group and all of these help to give my life structure. Many of my friends are part of sporting groups, book clubs, volunteer with community groups or surf clubs, but it seems the future of the organised social club is being replaced with more informal social groupings. Can facebook replace a yacht club ? Can a group of people you meet because they hang out at the same bar replace life-long friendships with school-mates (in my case, yes)?
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