Connection and Community
Without community, how will you become wiser?
From the archives, February 19, 2023:
My retirement stripped away imposed routines and I was left to discover what I actually needed, as opposed to what I was needed for. The things I missed the most were the convenient, sometimes deep, human connections of the workplace.
I rebuilt my days with intentional practices to replace the work routines. I made it a point to interact with someone outside the house every day. I went to classes at the Y, had lunch with friends, volunteered with Restorative Justice, taught meditation.
And then COVID. The world suddenly froze in suspended animation.
I didn't see the DO NOT ENTER sign and went inside my favorite coffee shop by mistake. The staff chased me out. Mocha lattes were offered through a window only, and please do not linger. When I walked through my neighborhood, people crossed to the other side of the street to keep the space between us wide.
I looked for community. But which one? There was the community of plants and animals around me: the red-shouldered hawks, the cardinals, the tufted titmice, the Carolina wrens, the spring peepers, the white snow drops, the pink and purple hyacinths planted by a stranger long ago.
There was the community of dog walkers engaging in shouted conversations over six-foot leashes.
There was my spiritual community of meditators, now practicing on Zoom - better than nothing, but not the same as sitting together in a room.
There were friendships conducted outdoors, on porches and around bonfires, or on masked walks with social distance between us.
There was the hardy band of yoga students who gathered outside in all weathers. Some mornings, the strategy was long underwear. Other mornings, it was place your mat in a shady spot to beat the brutality of the late morning sun.
In ordinary and extraordinary times, communities take shape and dissolve, or take shape, and remain, and change shape. There are classrooms and tour buses and conference breakout rooms. There are beloved communities, enlightened societies, communal farms, alumni reunions. There are intentional communities and accidental ones.
In the communities that the pandemic didn't destroy, there was renewal. The renewal could be uncomfortable. Where is our hierarchy? What happened to our old traditions? We can never exactly recover the communities that were lost during COVID. We've created something different.
The isolation of the pandemic brought home to me the value of human connection. If you never deal with the complicated dynamics of community, and the contradictions of even one other person whom ultimately you can never completely understand, how will you become wiser? Without noticing the changes in the people around you, how will you mark the changes in yourself? Your life might drift by you unnoticed.
"If you never deal with the complicated dynamics of community, and the contradictions of even one other person whom ultimately you can never completely understand, how will you become wiser? " I love this question E!