One of the core concepts we talk about in sociology is making the familiar unfamiliar. Familiarity is present countless times in our everyday life. The route to work becomes so familiar that it feels like we don’t drive it. The recipe that has been handed down in your family takes no time or effort to recall. The way that we treat people of certain age, status, gender, ethnicity is laden with generations of tradition and requires no recall in the moment. The way that we engage with things and practices of this world; how we eat, shop, use our bodies, feel about nature – we have practices and routines that are normal – and have become normalised over a long period of time.

This is a wonderful thing! Rituals of engagement are the things that form culture – rituals build families, communities, nations, a people hood. Familiarity and routine serves as a helpful manual of behaviour that we don’t have to use extra brain power to make more decisions throughout the day. Rituals mark moments and rites of passage that serve as signposts in our lives.

In general, however, familiarity serves the individual or in-group-within-culture, while also having an impact on the out-group, those outside of the culture.

What we assume as normal can be the site of privilege to us (and exclusion to others). For example, I was raised in 1980s Australia, hearing about the ‘discovery’ of our country, being told that it was normal to claim a land Terra Nullius and build a civilisation of convicts without consideration to the First Nations that lived here originally. This ‘normal’ way of teaching excluded an entire culture and history for generations. Or think about how we have historically treated or largely ignored people living with disabilities in our cultures. What is normal to us can be a source of pain to those outside of the culture or in group. Things that we are exposed to regularly become normalised, lulling us into acceptance and ignorance.

Perhaps we have a responsibility to become ‘unfamiliar’ to our familiar and recognise how our engagement and view of the world could be bringing pain to others.

On the flipside, things of wisdom, insight and beauty that is second nature in our circles can also be life changing to people outside your cultural or social context. Think of the hacks that experts share on social media. Think of the wisdom that elders share. Think of the way that our soul rises when we witness someone’s mastery; artists, musicians, authors, athletes, chefs, craftsmen and women; how we rejoice in the gift that their ‘everyday’ brings to the world.

Firgun is a Hebrew term that describes genuine delight or pride in another person’s achievement; We are the beneficiaries of the routines and shaping of someones craft. Their familiar is shared with us, and the world is BETTER for it.

It can be a particular type of joy that comes with reading a well written verse that makes you stop in delight. It often comes with a visceral reaction; like a woman in church shaking her head in agreement in the service, the rise of the shoulders of the note well played, the harmony shaped beautifully.

If you ask artists and people skilled at their labours, how they possibly could achieve their craft, often the question is met with confusion – you just do it? You just practice. You just write. You just run. You just cook. Their familiar, their routine, their everyday, is a wondrous thing to others.

I say this because one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was from my Academic Supervisor. One of our third year assessments was to explore a practice that you were familar with; I wrote about opshopping. It was completely normal to me to go thrifting on weekends with friends, finding outfits that no one else could buy at a fraction of the price. When I received the paper back, my supervisor asked to meet with me. “You know opshopping is weird, right?” were his first words in the meeting. “Most of the world doesn’t understand why you would want to do this.”
I was baffled at his words. What? I didn’t understand why people wouldn’t want to thrift.
But his unfamiliarity with my familiarity ultimately changed my life. He told me to write a thesis on it, which I did, which then led into my career in academia. What was normal to me – when shared – brought knowledge and insight to others.

So – being unfamiliar to your familiar.

Perhaps we have a responsibility to become ‘unfamiliar’ to our familiar and recognise how our engagement and view of the world could be bringing pain to others, where normalised views of ‘how things are’ can be a source of exclusion rather than welcome.

Asking ourselves what we think is normal – questions like:

• Who are the ‘real’ winners in life.
• Who are the losers?
• Who deserves my time?
• Who doesn’t?

Can be a great place to start.

Perhaps we likewise have a mandate to share the life-giving ‘familiar’ outside of our contexts, so that others can be the beneficiaries of our stories and skills. This doesn’t mean you have to start a social media account – but what craft have you honed? What wisdom has shaped you? What cultural traditions have built you up, that you can replicate and pass on? The world is hungry for beauty, and delicious food, and intelligence that answers questions. The world doesn’t know the wonderful things that you know
– but it wants to.