This article is about communities; the real ones.
I recognise the importance of communities and at the same time I have often felt that I have a limited and biased experience with them, leaving me feeling like an outsider looking in.
The concept of Community is vast, centred on the human beings through and around which it’s formed.
Depending on our upbringing and the culture we were born in, we may have a widely different view on what community is or should be. If we add to it the notions of “online community” and “location based” community, this complexifies and divides the subject even further, to the point that we are no longer talking about the same thing.
When distilled to its bare structure, community first refers to the energy of “we”, a togetherness, something that is common and shared and that connects us to one another and that this is not necessarily something we have consciously chosen.
But from here, I am mostly interested in the community(ies) we are knowingly and willingly part of, the one(s) we choose to participate in. In this case, community is about real human connection with the individuals who surround us, who we feel close to, to whom we have access and with whom we share something; even if this is limited to a certain context such as a social activity, a hobby, a sport, a club. In essence, at its core, community is social. It is about relationships and what takes place within them: communication, exchanges, paying attention, sharing, supporting, caring, celebrating, helping, serving, enquiring. And this, for the purpose of feeling a sense of resonance, belonging, integration, contribution, resources, impact maybe, ease, security, safety, expansion.
In spiritual circles, we often hear the group being called “sangha” which is a Sanskrit word for "association", "assembly", "company" or "community”. The Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is often referred to for his statement that “The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practising understanding and loving kindness, a community practising mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation”.
This statement emphasises the importance of the “we”, the togetherness, and with it the idea of practising something that is for the benefit of this “we”, which conveys a sense of collective action. This also highlights the significance of a “community spirit” or lack of. To Thich Nhat Hanh, this “community spirit” is about “understanding, loving kindness and mindful living”. It raises the question of what the virtues and qualities of a particular community are that we want to be part of, identify with and whether our current communities are powered by these virtues? These are important questions to ask ourselves, to interrogate the spirited aspect of our community and the values it stands for and does or does not embody.
As a therapist, I often remind people that we’re not meant to deal with our life’s ups and downs alone, we all need support and people in our lives; we are a social species. I encourage people to map out what I call their “support ecosystem” but also to take a “relationship inventory” by asking: who is in our life and why. This is where community starts: with the people in our lives. It’s a tangible fabric made of true and real human connections. Sometimes, this needs to be questioned and redefined.
This also leads to questioning our individual position within a community itself. Personally, I have never been a ‘group person’. As an introvert, when it comes to connecting with people, my comfort zone has always been in one to one relationships. Growing up, I wasn’t drawn to team work, collective sports, or groups of friends. I actually felt inept or inadequate, even when I tried, as if I was missing something to be able to fit into these settings. Because of this, community is something I have a complicated relationship with. On one hand, it’s something I value and desire, but on the other hand, I find it difficult to navigate. One thing I have come to know is that it isn’t a number’s game. We do not need to be surrounded and connected with a large number of people to have a sense of community.
Communities tend to show up (or not) and become alive in times of celebration but also in times of hardship. These are particular moments in one’s life where community can make a world of difference. Reinforcing the idea that “community” starts with and is made of people and that, in its simplest form, is about meaning and individuals coming together to form relationships. But there are some things about relationships that are worth being highlighted. First and most obvious is that we can’t force anyone to be in a relationship with someone else - whatever the level and depth of the relationship. Second, with relationships, comes seasonality. When a relationship starts, we simply don’t know when and if it’s going to end and how it’s going to transform and evolve over time. It’s organic. So if we extrapolate this idea to the concept of community, we have to accept that in the first place, for a community to exist, there needs to be a willingness to be in relation with others. A mutual desire for connectedness with one another.
The pandemic brought up fear, isolation and loneliness for many. The vaccine debate created ghosting, silencing and cancellation at all levels of society for those not agreeing with the broadcasted narrative. In my household, when covid hit us, it also prompted a movement from our community that we had underestimated. People from different circles of ours showed up. Some were taking turns to give us remote energy healings, neighbours and friends were dropping bags of food and medicine at the door, friends in the medical sphere were reaching out and checking-in. All up we’re probably talking about 6-8 people. To us they meant love, support, care and generosity.
As a counter example of what precedes, my husband used to be involved in his Jewish community and his reform synagogue for years. He was a paying member, he volunteered a great deal of his time through playing music at events, doing security work and fund raising for the “community” which in this instance was clearly defined. In every way he was an active and caring participant of this group. When he decided to separate from his ex-wife, he kept the situation to himself, but she didn’t. She went and told her side of the story far and wide. Quickly, this resulted in him being silently judged and excluded for his decision to leave his marriage. Not one person in his Jewish community offered not to take sides and to be simply a neutral, present and supportive individual during a difficult time. This completely transformed his relationship with Judaism and how it’s practised in the so-called “progressive movement”. He saw this community and the people in it in a new light. They didn’t embody the virtues and qualities he wanted to be surrounded by and involved with. And so he left.
Recently, we moved to northern Portugal. We discovered that Portuguese people are deeply community orientated, at least in the areas that haven’t been gentrified. This may be in part to do with the fact that for forty one years the country was under dictatorship and very much closed up to the rest of the world. From this period, I believe Portugueses have learned to rely on their geographically close community and to be self-reliant, and not in isolation from one another. Here people commonly say that their first family are their neighbours, and not just because very often their family lives in the same street.
Portuguese are proud people, proud of their country and their culture, they are generous and welcoming, for the most part. When we arrived, neighbours came to say hello, introduced themselves and told us that we could reach out should we need anything. And when we did, they showed up. And when they do, we show up. There is something to be said for the smiles, the hand waving, the looking out for each other, for the checking-in messages when your blinds have been closed for a few days, for the food from the gardens dropped at each other’s doors.
Not being able to speak the language properly yet and being new to the local customs is humbling and also reminded us that so little of communication happens through actual words. The energy, the body language and the behaviours allow us to connect too, to reveal ourselves. For this true and real human connection, I am grateful. It’s precious. It's not a defined community with well crafted rules of engagement you have to agree to to be included in. It’s subtle and nuanced and it is based on true authentic human attitudes and interactions. There is no place to hide. We all know where each other lives.
In the meantime, six months in, reality has hit home in some ways. We are coming out of the honeymoon phase with our new country and as with any new relationship, we have started to perceive the cracks. There are things we disagree with. It’s not perfect, but it’s not a deal breaker either. It’s about balancing and managing expectations and boundaries.
We are all in relationship with everything and everyone around us, however we’re not going to be in “community” with it all. For a start, we’re all subjected to temporality, there is only so much time and energy we can allocate to be in relation with others. Then, assuming that a great proportion of our time is allocated to our immediate core circle and work, how much is left for the rest is highly variable and depends on our choices and priorities.
We can often feel like we’re part of many communities but there is a difference between a real community versus a so-called “online community”. Online, we are often invited or incentivised to join groups, often at the cost of our email address and/or some money. It’s common practice these days that when we purchase something such as an online course that we also buy the right to be included in a closed online group or “container”, whose rules we need to abide by, otherwise we will be excluded. Often this group may be time bound. In other words, we are part of it for as long as we are a paid member or subscriber.
Sometimes we ask to join a group whose topic interests us. To stay in the group we quickly realise that we have to either be quiet or agreeable, to keep it “a safe space”, and to not “advertise”. Only the group and community leaders can advertise and they will, because that is often the reason why there is a group in the first place; to promote something. At this point in the journey we may have been exposed to and consumed a fair amount of content available in the group but this can very well happen without us having engaged with anyone (hello to all the introverts navigating social media and scratching their heads). As a matter of fact, we may not have had a single real human connection or dialogue.
A post, a video, a comment, a reaction (emoji, gif) is not dialogue. These are not conversations nor true human connections. There aren’t even real touch points. I see it as a group of mad drivers in a race, all singly driving on a one way road towards a fictitious destination at the end of which they all crash into each other in a magisterial and cacophonic collision of unsolicited points of view, overshares of personal stories and reactions surrounded by floating hearts and hugs. In the middle of this mess, if we were to pull the carcasse of our own car out of the group, chances are no one will notice, no one will enquire, no one will ask, no one will be remotely aware nor care. And why is this? Because it’s not a community, it’s just the illusion and pretence of being one. It is the emperor's new clothes.
It’s not always true that we need to give to receive. We’ve all been in some sort of relationship where we’ve over-given and received very little in return. So if social media was a relationship, it would be the ultimate taker, the narcissistic and vampire archetypes having had a baby together. Which is why the concept of online communities on social media is mostly a chimaera. It usually serves one person mostly, “the emperor”. The person who dictates, gets to stay permanently and express themselves.
There are more online communities now than there ever have been in the past. There are some people with millions of followers echoing and cheering their every word only for these same people to be riddled by a sense of emptiness, isolation and loneliness if, alongside, there isn’t a real life community.
When we talk about the dilution of communities what we’re really naming is the dilution of the dialogue and connection between individuals who were part of our in-person world.
Social media is the illusion of connection and dialogue. It doesn’t mean it can’t do good things and that they aren’t good aspects to social media. But when it comes to “community”, it’s simply not what it pretends to be.
As individuals, we need and want to be seen, to be noticed by other human beings, by flesh and bone. We need the human touch, the hug, the smile, the eyes, the gesture, the gaze, the energy. The authenticity of valuing and being valued which can’t be faked.
In real life, in a real community, we show up or we don’t, but we can’t pretend, we can’t hide.
We commit or we don’t. But either way, we’re noticed.
May we be noticed.
Thank you for reading.
Mahé
A wonderful reminder to Generations who grew up with social media as their friend. I grew up forced to communicate face to face and voice to voice. I fear for new gens who have been taught that you can get away with an emoji as an answer and that actual friends are the ones on social media. Neither of these are true. I wonder about the states of relationships which, with every generation (since boomer), become more fractured and superficial- a fantasy. We all know we can fantasise a relationship into being. It doesn’t make it real.