Building Community
There’s a post that has been making its way around the Internet for the last week or two. The author speaks about a lesson she learned at her brother’s funeral. A community showed up to say goodbye to him. While the author has friends and family, she realized she didn’t have a community. At least, not a group of people she could count on in the way that her brother — who invested many of his hours into his community — could when he was at the end of his life.
She describes all the things these people did for the family, and then writes,
This was community. And what I would come to learn, slowly, is that community is about a series of small choices and everyday actions: how to spend a Saturday, what to do when a neighbor falls ill, how to make time when there is none. Knowing others and being known; investing in somewhere instead of trying to be everywhere.
I paused after reading that passage. Do I have a community or do I have a mishmash of family and friends?
And what is the difference, and how important is that difference? I checked in with my heart: was I lonely? There are times when I don’t make time for other people; when I give everything to Josh and the twins and then crawl into bed and move the phone calls I have to make over one day on the to-do list.
I need to stop doing that.
Because, like the author, “My community will be here for my family if I cannot be. And if I die, my kids will be surrounded people who know and love them, quirks and warts and oddities and all.”
It’s a really gorgeous piece. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
5 comments
Wow! I just read the article you are referring to and one of my favorite statements she made was “But I think community is also an insurance policy against life’s cruelty; a kind of immunity against loss and disappointment and rage.” This is so true!
Yes. I agree. I’m an introvert so I’m happy, at least short term, only being with family.
But I see how my mom has struggled with having almost no one after my dad’s death. And I want my daughter to be surrounded by good people. So I’m happy to say I’ve been making a more successful effort lately. The unfortunate truth is you can’t count on only family.
This article was so, so lovely. I have felt recently that social media outlets like Facebook or Instagram (which I am not on) create a bit of a fake community — it seems like you have many connections, but it’s a millimeter deep. It’s a good way to connect with family or friends from long ago, but phone calls, cards, letters, texts, in person visits…those are way better. One Facebook thing that I felt was really helpful and qualified as community was when a friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her friends and family set up a private facebook group to support her, where we could get updates and send messages of support and sign up for meal delivery and child pickups and things like that. It was a crossover from impersonal “likes” and status updates into “real life,” and connection that allowed her to communicate with people who cared without exhausting her physical being. That was an amazing use of Facebook for community, I thought.
I think also as you get older, not just growing your community but evaluating your friendships and the people you surround yourself with and give your time to can be important… Recently I have found that I would rather give my time and energy to those who lift me up and who help me be a better version of myself than to people who I’ve known a long time but drag me into negativity or leave me feeling drained and unhappy after time spent together. I would rather have fewer friends that are connected on a deeper level than lots of friends on a shallower level.
I would count blogging as community, one hundred per cent — I feel a deep connection and care to people I’ve never met in person through the sharing of our lives on the internet. And I am grateful to you for curating such a beautiful community.
Just last month, while reading a new book, I was lamenting my seeming lack of community. I have friends and family and, should a crisis arrive, I could ask for help but for the simple day-to-day things I am alone. There is no one to get my kids to baseball practice but me. No one can get my daughter to school if there is a 2 hour delay and I have to be at work. Even more troubling, if something were to happen to me, there isn’t really a safety net for my kids. This article makes my heart ache because I so need a community but I feel unable to create one. The individuality of American life seems less-conducive to community. Maybe it’s just the part of the country where I live, I don’t know. I shall keep trying to scrape a group together because I do see the importance.
I have a small group of friends here in this city, but I don’t know that I’d call it a community. It’s something I’m very conscious I need to build, given that I don’t have children or family members here to provide support when I’m old(er). (My family all live elsewhere.)
I do think though it is important for you to though to be able to choose when to give time to others, if you’ve already given everything to Josh and the kids. Don’t beat yourself up on that. If we build communities around us, when one person is already exhausted and can’t help, then there will be someone else to step in.
And I agree with Jess about the various parts of the blogging community being a community that is there for support when we need it. You’ve built a wonderful community here. It’s real. It exists. I just can’t bring you dinner or take you to a medical appointment.