Some communities arrive with our first breath. Family. Place. Language. History. We don’t apply for membership; we inherit it. I was born a white, English-speaking South African in the mid-1950s. None of that was chosen. It was given—along with the obligations that follow.

What we do choose is how to carry these inheritances. Titles sound grand—son, brother, husband, father—but the work is ordinary and daily: show up, listen properly, keep promises, say sorry quickly, forgive slowly but fully. Pride is noisy; steadiness is quiet. I’m learning to prefer the quiet.

Community stretches beyond our front door. The women and men around us breathe the same air and shoulder the same weather. If we are equal in our dust, we can be equal in our dignity. Respect is not a policy; it’s a practice with names and faces: the neighbour who needs a lift, the clerk who’s had a long day, the runner in the pack you encourage rather than elbow. Small courtesies might feel trivial, but they stitch a torn fabric one thread at a time.

South Africa’s past is not a chapter I can skip. I’ve benefited from structures I didn’t build and from advantages I didn’t earn. That acknowledgement isn’t a performance or a plea—it’s a starting line. My task is modest but clear: help more than I hinder, build more than I break, listen longer than I speak. I won’t fix history, but I can choose to be useful in my square metre of it.

There are also communities we enter by love or labour—clubs, teams, faith circles, work crews, the loose fraternity of people who show up at dawn for a long run. These aren’t just networks; they are places where responsibility is rehearsed. We carry one another’s bags for a while. We celebrate a PB, deliver a meal, visit a hospital bed, write the awkward apology. In these small acts we remember who we are: creatures who need one another to become ourselves.

So the question is not whether we belong, but how we will belong. Will we pass on what we were given—patience, kindness, courage—or will we merely enjoy the yield? The communities that chose me ask for my hands, not just my opinions. They ask for time, not just posts. They ask for hope that can be borrowed when someone else has run out.

And you? Which unchosen circles shaped you—family, birthplace, the stories told around your table? What would it look like to carry them with humility and turn them outward for the common good?