Community – a hardship or an adventure?
How do we think about living in community? As a really difficult and hard journey, people are painful? Or do you think of it as a fun, full of learning and adventure? There will be moments of magic, moments of dullness and moments that are really hard. That is true of any life you choose. There are things that need to be let go of, to be learnt and to unlearn to make the lifestyle shift to come into “common unity” (community) with those around you. How do you view living in your community? As a hard journey, complaining about how we are not equipped to be communal, were were not taught this at school or what is not the way I like it? Or as the adventure of a lifetime? Your lifetime?
Embrace all of it – the good and the bad
What do you use as your basis of comparison to make your judgement about how things are for you and how the community is? Do you have a picture in mind of how it should be, your dream lifestyle? And then do you look at all the areas where the current situation falls short and feel disappointed? Often we look at things and only see the gaps or the problems and forget about how far we have come and how great it is. Or can you enjoy the journey, the process and engage with what your community is now? All of it, the good, the bad, the disgusting, the stuff ups, the disagreements, the frustrations, the fun, the beauty, the love, the laughs?
Let’s play and be curious and see where it goes, allow us to connect more deeply with other people. Bringing playfulness, curiosity, openness, kindness, humor and listening rather than frustration, I’m right or “oh no, not you again”. Someone is not happy with something? Well great, let’s have that conversation. Someone won’t approve something or suggests a change? Great! Let’s have that conversation. Someone is upset and angry and is not treating others respectfully? Great! Let’s have that conversation as well.
Resolving issues or conflict leads to what you desire
Just on the other side of that conflict or annoyance or fear is what we desire. By leaning into the uncomfortableness, embracing conflict and differences as opportunities to grow and get to know each other more deeply, we move closer to what we are seeking. I know communities who embrace conflict, they go “oh a disagreement, great we get to unpack it and grow”. They embrace it and reap the rewards both as a community and personally. In the process they build their emotional resilience and the overall resilience and sustainability of the community.
Embrace your desire for community and Celebrate how far we have come
Most people, I suspect, are living the community life because they just can’t do it the old way – the nuclear family, suburban/city on our own way – they yearn for something deeper, more fulfilling, more fun and more connected. Instead of comparing to the ideal and always falling short, it can be much more useful and enjoyable to compare where we are now with the old way, to see how far we have come, rather than with the perfect ideal vision that does not (yet) exist.
How do you see and connect more deeply with the process of community? Can you see it as an adventure where we are learning and growing, where the journey is taking us closer to our ideal; to our destination? Can you see how far you’ve come and how good the community is? Celebrating what we’ve achieved and what’s great about it just as much as dealing with what’s not working.
The destination is always changing
Can we embrace and allow our ideal (the destination) to change and evolve as we learn and grow? Community is a process – we think we want A, B, C, D, E so we create them and then we get the feedback – A,B and C are fantastic, D is okay though part of it didn’t really work so we need to change that part and E was just yuck (let’s not do E again!). So our ideals change as we create, do, learn, experience and grow. The process of community is more like a series of experiments done over time than a fixed plan. With the results of each experiment feeding back into evolving our desires. It’s a research and design project where the destination is shifting and evolving.
I invite you to connect, or reconnect, to the excitement and inspiration in you that originally led you to live in a community. Enjoying the moments along the way without focusing too much on the destination, embracing all of it as best you can.
In the end, living in community is the journey of a lifetime.