Community.
People crave it.
And they’re terrified of it.
Why?
Because community requires a bunch of social strategies and understandings that are simply not being developed these days. Hiding behind screens has eroded peoples’ in-person communication abilities which are necessary to engage in meaningful discussions and resolve misunderstandings.
If you can’t speak meaningfully and resolve miscommunications in-person, then you CAN’T really be in community. When people are in community and lacking these abilities, those communities quickly fragment and fall apart with the smallest misunderstandings or problems.
Then pride gets in the way.
Oh pride. You suck.
Few people want to consider much less admit that they don’t know how to be in community. That pride leads us to further individualize in an already hyper-individualized society.
The way out?
We surrender pride and our ego.
And we accept that we all have a lot of learning to do to successfully form and sustain community. We accept that a lot of confusion, awkwardness, and fear will come up, and we collectively do the work.
Because on the other side of that is
a deep sense of connection
that people are longing for.
2 Comments
Thanks for this timely post Jim. I am facing a hard time… Pride, friction, what not.. As I am staying with my husband an in laws as family. I am finding it very difficult to communicate as elders seem to be closed to it and on my side there is fear of speaking up.
For a long time I have worked to please everyone and avoid conflict. I wish to live sepqrately with my husband but my parents in law are elderly and not too well physically and therefore we can’t stay alone. I feel guilty yet I feel stuck as even though they are old, they want ro run things exactly on their terms, which makes me feel very constricted. This is a family – community and I feel uneasy about living together yet not connected with each other.
I guess we would be better off being far physically yet close at heart, but this is not acceptable to others in the family. Sorry but I just had to write it, it seemed to fit inexactly with your content.
Regards
Thanks for sharing, Anon. There are no perfect solutions in life. That’s why we surrender our egos–so we can see what Is. Then we do the best we can with the information we have at hand.