By Amber Ammouche
It’s only recently, in my early 20s, that I’ve felt connected to the community of Brimbank. When I was younger, the Brimbank community was something I had only heard of and never really saw, except in the newspaper. I always wonder if I knew about certain community services, what they had to offer, maybe my experience with certain situations could have been different.
My earliest memories of Brimbank were going to the little old Keilor library that looked more like a house, it had a homey feel to it. Now the library has moved and updated into an endless hub of resources, which is great in a way but it doesn’t hold the same feelings or memories for me as it once did.
As I look back on my life, I feel lucky to have grown up in the West. It’s filled with so much colour, so much vibrancy, different places and different faces. There’s always something to see and something to do! So what is it about the West that makes it have such a ‘negative’ representation?
Lately, as I’ve walked the streets of the West, I’ve been seeing more division than unity. It’s unfortunate that one bad experience can define us all and makes people reluctant to come back to the West. We must come together and look past that.
To me, the West is resilient, we don’t let things define us or drag us down; instead we take that opportunity to rise. The West has so many beautiful things to see. If you stopped and looked around once in a while, you’d see it too! I think people are so busy nowadays they forget that – always on the go and never taking time to appreciate the small things. Generations are losing meaningful connections that are now being replaced by numbing technology. Instead of living in the moment freely and wholeheartedly, it’s watched through a camera lens. Sure, you’ve captured it on film to replay until the end of time, but the feelings felt in that certain moment you may never be able to recapture.
It’s important to acknowledge where you come from and be proud of it! If we were all the same – born in the same country, went to the same school, had all the same experiences – there wouldn’t be anything to talk about. We wouldn’t be interesting at all! We wouldn’t be special in all the unique ways that make us, us. Although you can’t change your past or history you can change how it impacts you both positively and negatively in the present and future. Our backgrounds and connections to the West, the experiences we’ve gone through with place, have all shaped us into the people we are today. The West is a place that provides us opportunities to educate one another about our lives and cultures to provide understanding not judgement. To showcase acceptance and acknowledgement not ignorance and hate. To some, having a sense of belonging doesn’t necessarily mean a person or place but rather a feeling.
Belonging doesn’t have to mean fitting in, it means acceptance!
