“Without a community, you cannot go very far” – Thich Nhat Hanh
It’s been a bit of a trip thinking about community – it took a long time for me to wonder what it looked like as a month study. What does it mean to do your best in relation to community? I wanted to look at how I foster relationships, how I rely on my relationships with others in my everyday life? We’re all social creatures, myself especially so – an extrovert, by nature, (but discovering my need to be alone from time to time.) Moving a lot as a kid has made my relationships even more precious to me and I make every effort to stay in touch with my people and to consider them in decisions, like “Hey, what could we do today? Let’s invite whosit!” (Whosit is an endearing term that means ‘all the people who I know.’) I had a friend once tell me that the thing I’m good at is connecting people with ideas and with other people. Author Elizabeth Gilbert refers to “the pollinators,” people whose purpose it is to explore the world and carry their learnings along with them, allowing cross-pollination to naturally occur, passing information and physical objects from one community to another. The notion of people as pollinators resonated with me. I loved the film, The Bee Movie and how the concept that Seinfeld, et.al. wanted to show was that bees, the most recognizable O.G. pollinators, had pre-determined jobs and did those jobs unquestionably. The worker bee did not say “Hey! I wanna be the Queen Bee!” and then fight to become the Queen Bee. The worker bee was content to be the worker bee and carried on as such. That is, until Barry B. Benson comes along, but I digress. Watch the movie. My point is, recognizing your role in your community doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be the most famous or richest or most popular or what you expected at all, but we all have a role to play and we are all necessary and vital parts of our community.
I try to stay in touch with my community as much as possible. Sometimes, I only have enough time and energy to take care of my immediate family, but I always try to interact with my wider community as much as I can. I’m a big fan of picking up the phone and calling my friends. I realized recently that is one of the things that makes kids in their 20’s consider me “old.” (I realize that calling humans in their 20’s ‘kids,’ also ages me. I also like buying CD’s and playing them in my car, so…) Despite all its flaws, social media helps connect to our tribe as well. I have a pretty amazing group of friends, both close and long distance friends who I only catch up with on Facebook and Instagram. Generally, my group of friends (and my algorithm) are optimistic and intelligent and putting out content that contributes positively to my life. Developing discernment around how I let those posts affect my life can be tricky, but ultimately it’s a matter of use what I need and let go of the rest. This blog is a way too - if I can share some tiny seed of inspiration for one person, that’s enough (as cliché as that sounds.) The blog is definitely a way for me to stay accountable to my personal work and practically speaking, get my ideas out there.
Community means many things to many people – it’s our neighbourhood, our friends and family, our home. I rely on my community to keep me centered and to constantly press the buttons that keep me in my spiritual centre. I’ll give you an example – my daughter throwing a tantrum. Here’s a situation that is super unpleasant and the first feelings that rise are anger and frustration, both mine and hers. It’s hard to do anything but yell or walk away in a situation like that. But then I remember I used to throw these same temper tantrums when I was a kid, my mom and dad walked away, thinking that ignoring me would be the best solution “Don’t encourage that kind of behavior.” When I sat and watched my daughter in her fit of rage, stepped back from attaching a personal emotion to it and thought about what was triggering her behavior, I was able to ask: What does she need right now? What is she really asking for? I realized it was the same things that little me was asking when I was behaving that way. I wanted to be heard, to be seen, to be held and given the space to feel the way I was feeling, however irrational it was. (Note – kids are rarely rational, don’t try to reason with a child-mind in a blinding rage, same goes for adults in a blinding rage.) As soon as I was able to just gently take her hand and hold her in my arms, she calmed down. It’s interactions and realizations like this with my family, friends and beyond that provide the instances I need to develop as a person. It’s situations of great personal challenge that allow me to support my community in return.
Once we come out of the experience of anger, frustration and all manner of shitty feelings, we are better able to empathize with the struggles of our community, we know where they are because we’ve been there ourselves. This is the boon of suffering. Our community is here to support us as we support our community. We see “the helpers,” as Mr. Fred Rogers’ referred to them everywhere, often and especially in times of need. The quote at the beginning of this post kind of says it all to me – in conversation with Martin Luther King during the Vietnam War, Buddhist monk and Mindfulness teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh knew that unity amongst peace activists was the only way to make their call for peace heard around the world. Whether we want to be successful as individuals or as a group, there is no such thing as being “self-made,” no one thrives in isolation. So, dear reader, a deep thank you for being part of my community, I couldn’t be me without you.
Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh, 1966