It’s Time to Redefine Community

Healing the area of how we relate to community is a big theme for me this year. When we look at our current societal behavior around community - it seems that it is time for reimagining.

In the United States at least, businesses have become responsible for community building. Going to a coffee shop is now how we get to be around other people. While there is nuance, it is funny to observe how in the United States almost all of the community nourishment you can get, or the nourishment of being around people, is by spending money. Do you want some human interaction? Go to a coffee shop, the mall, or the bar. Many cities, don’t really have the urban planning for public spaces or communal areas to go to. It is nuanced because on one hand we are supporting small businesses when we go to a coffee shop, but we can also be limiting who can opt in to community to the people who can afford these luxury items like a $5 coffee, and it can push us deeper into the hamster wheel of capitalism to have more and more expenses that then justify the job we hate.

In dancing with the nuance, maybe we can decide it would be better to spend the money to get some community time at a locally owned coffee shop, rather than a Starbucks, etc. In making small intentional changes in our lives to sow the seeds of a new way of community, we cannot focus on perfectionism, but on the small changes or just trying our best.

What would reimagined community look like?

I recently joined the Next Door app to see if there would be some local job opportunities, like to cat sit, and I saw how the entire app was taken over with warnings to neighbors about possibly dangerous people outside on the street with many security camera screenshots. This is so sad and also a lost opportunity. These types of community pages could be used to share resources, like some item that we all have a lot of (like batteries- the pack is way too many) and so we either lose it or it expires before we can use it. Or we could be sharing kitchen appliances that we use once a year for the special recipe? This is another way that we can get off of the capitalist hamster wheel of always needing more. The combination of the consumerism cycle and individualism drains us, I often feel like just to adult and go to the store to get the things I need and clean, etc. there is always something more to do. But this is a cultural phenomenon which is negative in so many ways: drains our life force, give us less time to do the things we love, and is bad for the environment because we need one of everything and engaging with businesses for community has us use more waste, etc.

Some of the changes can be reimagined by urban and community planning. Like in Latin America it is common to have plazas at the middle of every city that people can just sit in and are so beautiful. I feel so inspired by community centers that individuals come together to build like community gardens, and other event centers.

I hope as a community we can continue to dream up ways to reimagine community.