Seeking Asylum Within

There’s a lot of strong feelings at the moment in the UK about asylum seekers arriving by boat and flags being flown.

But Ive been thinking: asylum isn’t only something that happens at our borders. It also happens inside us. Each of us carries our own strangers within; grief we’ve never mourned, anger and envy we’ve disowned, fear, vulnerability, and dependence we’ve tried to hide away.

When these disowned bits of us seek asylum and there is no internal refuge and integration. We are more inclined to push and project outward and see it in the other. Right now, asylum seekers arriving on boats have become a screen for that projection.

If we treat our inner strangers (disowned bits) as intruders, they remain enemies. But if we accept them, they become part of our inner community.

And here’s the link: once we can accept the asylum seekers within, we’re far more able to accept the asylum seekers outside. Tolerating and understanding the “strangers within” is what makes it possible to meet the otherness of others without fear or hate.

No easy answers. But perhaps a different place to begin.

That’s why I created this image, the boat inside the head represents our own unprocessed aspects of self, equally seeking asylum. And the flag behind reminds us how easily our inner conflicts get carried onto the symbols of nationhood and identity.