Community in 2020

The word community comes from a Latin word, communis which means common, public, general, shared by all or many or a "public spirit". The history of words is fascinating. It is also interesting to see how those words evolve over time to a point where it is hard to tell if we agree on their meaning. Maybe companies could sense we're tired of American individualism, because they use the word community gratuitously. We have the Google community, the Gopro community, Lululemon community, insert name of Crossfit box community, the mountain biking community, the sober community, lgbtq community, and several food brands that put on the back of their label to look them up online to join their "community". While I think most of us would agree that more community is a good thing, the word has been taken a bit too far and I'm not sure it results in better communities. I do a certain type of workout that is similar to Crossfit. Thousands of others do these workouts too and there are online groups for people that do this workout and are moms, sober, over 50, women, live in whatever state, in the military, and so on. I'm not naming the company because I really like what they have going on. The owners often post videos and address the "x community". They say things like we just want to have a conversation with you or make sure to connect with you today. I like the groups, I like the workouts, and I like the videos with what the owners have to say. However, it is hardly a community. I haven't yet met any of the people, I wouldn't ask them how their day was, and certainly the "conversation" from the owners is not reciprocal. They are talking to a camera and posting it, which I don't think is community, unless we set the bar low. We could set the bar low and accept that version of community, but I think we'd be missing out on the benefits of actual community. If you look up a definition of community, a summary is this: A unified body of individuals who share something in common like location or interest, a feeling of fellowship with others, or in ecology, a group of organisms who are interdependent and growing together. I might actually like the 3rd definition best. There is a great Atlantic article about how we used to be born into communities. I was born into several communities. I grew up in a town of 500 people. That in itself was a community, there was my church community, school community, sports, music, and later, work community. Location was part of what made all these things a community, but there was more to it. It all felt like community because we were interdependent, growing together, there was mostly a sense of belonging, shared interests, and people looking out for another. Truthfully, growing up in such a small community made it all that more painful when I didn't quite belong in any one of those communities. It wasn't like I could just join another one. I was constantly a square trying to fit into a round hole. Can you have community without belonging? I think it is harder that way. Fellowship with others does seem like a big part of community. Thinking about my school community growing up, there wasn't much fellowship for me at times. When it felt like actual community, things were jovial, there was support, checking in on each other, gossip at times, and a sense of safety. When I did things like decide to be vegetarian, this community felt more like a group of people I had to tolerate at school. Yet, if we used the third definition, we were interdependent. Our learning or progress in sports and music depended on us working together. I would define community in the modern day this way: a group of people that shares something in common, cares about each other, interacts regularly, are interdependent, and feel like they belong together. If we want to set the bar higher, I would say a great community shares resources, comes together for the greater good, and takes care of each other. I could geek out all night about what community means and great communities I've been part of. It is on my mind a lot these days, because I'm realizing how important community is this year. For the first part of this year, my partner and I lived in a fancy part of town. We were renting for 4 years. Since it is fancy, our rent kept going up and we decided to buy in a different part of town. In the 4 years we lived there, we met our duplex neighbor. That's it. One time I talked the owner of the preschool next door. The preschool was built after we moved in and there was obviously no consideration of the neighbors or community. Kids screamed all day and so did the teachers. The lack of knowing our neighbors became apparent during covid. There was a phase of covid in which we weren't supposed to travel more than 10 miles. Most of our friends live all over the metro area and we weren't seeing them. For a good 3 months, it was just my partner and I, teletherapy at work, and various face time calls to friends. As for many of us, it felt lonely, disconnected, and the lack of neighborhood community was shocking. Within a week of buying our house in the less affluent neighborhood, we met 4 out of 5 of our adjacent neighbors. They came to us to welcome us here and genuinely wanted to know about who we are. In that same week, I learned this neighborhood has a gang war going on and is chronically under resourced. In the past three weeks, I've learned what community really means. I attended a neighborhood meeting to come up with solutions to stopping the violence. I met tons of my neighbors who were coming together because they care about this community, take care of each other, feel they belong together, and wanted to see how we could work together toward a common goal. In addition to that, when I asked for some handy person help and help with a tree stump in our yard, several people responded. The people that helped talked about the community vibe here and taking care of one another. So, one neighborhood was full of rich people who were rugged individualists and have all the resources in the world. The other neighborhood has less resources, but more community. I choose the latter. Community to me means taking care of humanity. People join gangs for a reason. Just because the rich people can ignore it, doesn't mean that reality, violence, racism, etc, doesn't affect us all. The difference is that people with the community orientation are trying to do something about it. I can say too that the people over here, even with all the violence, seem a whole lot happier than my old Porsche/Audi/BMW driving neighbors. I have community in the friends I've chosen, I have a mountain biking community, a coaching community, and a therapist community. Some community is organic and sometimes we have to build it. Either way, we have to put the effort in to be part of the community. We need to take back the word and have real communities, especially in 2020. The earth is on fire, black people keep getting killed by the police, Trump is still president, we have a crazy virus on our hands, and you can probably name more than that. Now, more than ever, we need a group of people that cares about each other, that we feel belong with, and works together on behalf of common humanity.