Now, I'm not so sure. I mean, I've been on Twitter. I know how echo-chamber it can be out there. It's not a simple matter of showing up at the water cooler or at church and letting myself breath the same air as someone who voted for Doug Ford; what does it mean to be in community with people?
Obviously, file this under "yet another way Covid—and just modern life in general—has got us fucked up," but let's dive in?
Not too long ago, Devon Price put up an Instagram post that kind of blew my mind a little bit. "Capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy drain us, dehumanize us, and alienate us from each other (and our own needs) daily. Forming a thriving, truly interdependent community can feel nearly impossible under this system. Our lives are set up to be as hostile to community formation as possible. Many of the things that we call community are not communities at all. They’re fandoms and friend groups or brand identities.”
And pardon me if this wasn't just a whole paradigm shift for me. It spoke to why some of the issues in what I had considered "my community" felt like intractable interpersonal rifts—it's because they were. Friend groups are set up on the basis of people liking each other and their shared histories together, not on a vision or a common goal or a shared belief. Friend groups are often fundamentally incompatible with the complexities of community, because community sometimes asks us to exist alongside (and in close proximity to!) people whose personalities might drive us right up the wall, but who also want to achieve something we find valuable or important. Community allows us to actively dislike some members, while friend groups are really skittish about that.
I think is why "finding community" is sometimes so tough, especially as we age into our 30s and 40s. For me, this was a time in my life where I really started to question if I still believed in the same stuff I did in my 20s, and what I really do believe in, if not that. Things I took for granted in my 20s—the shape of my life, the family I wanted, the partner, the house, the kid, the job, the goals—all of that was upended and opened up by a series of wildly destabilizing catastrophes and losses in my early 30s. Coming out the other side, it turned out I was weirder, more tender, angrier, more open to joy, than I ever had been before. I had to be, because those are the things that let me survive that time. But those things are not universally beloved by all; in some regards, I felt like I was starting from scratch in both friendships and in community, and would have to build both back up.
I have been driven to Google "what makes a good community," and it's not usually everybody gets along and there are snacks, although that does sound dreamy. Communities have roles and goals: people do specific things, for specific reasons. Communities have expectations and traditions: you're accountable to the people you're with, and you're often doing it with a sense of duty and meaning-making. Communities treat each other well, with kindness and fairness and transparency. Communities involve a diversity of people—elders and children, rich and poor, workers and volunteers—and value them in thoughtful and appropriate ways. And yeah, communities often do have fun, and people do like each other. But you can also be in community with someone who makes you want to sigh your loudest and most dramatic sigh.
For me, my vision of community is often centered around values: hope for a better and less scary world; that we can help each other, even when things are ugly; the power of laughter and joy in both those things. There are details that would make this a more beautiful vision—like, yes I would like to be living in a progressive oasis where billionaires are illegal, we have weekly potlucks, and the children actually learn about Black History Month and Pride in school—but we start with the basics, and they can be done from anywhere, with most people. It's amazing to me that they aren't universal, but, hey: communities exist for people who aren't like me, too.
It has been so interesting to me the different ways that community has been present in my life. When I was in university, I lived in a student housing co-op, and my closest friends were the ones who really believed in the co-op's mission, the ones who put in time and effort and sweat to making the place we lived better. But the beauty of it wasn't that I lived only with my closest friends. I also lived with people I couldn't stand, people who were sometimes unsafe, people who were careless or rude or odd or just...so different from me. And for the most part, we all made it work. We got the dishes done and the leaves raked, and we threw parties and cleaned up after them. It hung together in some strange, beautiful way.
And now, in a small town, there are people I see regularly whom I adore, whose work and lifestyle I admire, who aren't quite friends but who are colleagues in our respective life-project. There are friends I like very much and who are also so different from me, whose political leanings or parenting choices are very different from mine, but we find other ways to connect. And there are folks who are true friends, who make me laugh and laugh and who will also drop off a case of Coke Zero when we have covid. There is friendship in community, after all.
I'm satisfied with this expanded experience of community—beyond just friend groups, fandoms, and brand identities—because it allows things to be weird and shaggy. Communities are the definition of imperfect, the embodiment of "I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing" and in these days—with the disasters looming/regularly unfolding—we need all the dancing we can get.
