How Relationships and Community Fulfill the Same Need for Connection
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PHIL: In this culture, there is a strong focus on the individual. It is your responsibility to take care of yourself, to stay alive, to plan for the future. And yet, we are not a solitary species; we are a social species who need each other to survive. This is an intrinsic part of our nature, and connecting with others fills a deep longing.
It is a need just as much as food, water, and shelter are. And yet it does not announce itself the same way that hunger, thirst, and cold do because it is spread so widely. Yes, we can say we miss a particular person, sometimes very deeply, but I think the sense of being in a community comes from the many connections that we have, and we often fail to recognize and value that.
If I keep asking who you are, I’ll get a slew of answers starting with your name, and then various identities you have – a parent, a dental technician (or whatever your career has been), a photographer, a Grateful Dead fan. You feel at home with other Deadheads or dentists or whoever your tribe is; people like you who share interests or passions or activities.
When this happens, we lose ourselves to a greater or lesser extent and become part of the group. This is cool, in general, and is like a vacation away from home. Great music groups like The Band talk about the sense of unity when playing together. I’ll point out that there can also be a dark side to this. Deindividuation occurs with cults, witch hunts, violent crowds, and lynch mobs.
Personal relationships also fulfill the same need for connection. Of course, you have to be open to sharing yourself and open to accepting the other person as they are, appreciating the shock of difference and enjoying the recognition of similarity. Easy to say, harder to do, as we all have our own ideas about how things should be. Letting go of that need to control is the key to being open and connecting. The more you can do that, the more that itch for connection gets scratched.
MAUDE: Community. I’ve been thinking about it a lot these past few days. As many of you know, I am the steward of a Little Free Library (Phil does a great job when I’m not around!). Several times this week, people have stopped to share with me how much our Little Library has contributed to creating a community feeling in this neighborhood, and how important it is to them. That is saying a lot, as we live downtown, on a street with mixed residential and businesses/offices.
People take out books, leave books with notes for the library, return books, and generally take part in making this a library for our community. I overheard two women talking as they went by the other day, and one said to the other, “I put a book in yesterday, and it was gone later that day!” She was proud and excited to be participating.
Community. I believe that we are all drawn strongly toward that sense of belonging. We recognize our deep connections to one another on a visceral level. We respond to both being engaged with one another, and to our individual paths. To some, they’ve been taught to trust only those that they feel are the same as they are. However community is defined, we all have that push to come together.
We follow the same pattern in our close relationships. We create community with another and receive support, acceptance, and acknowledgment. We feel seen and heard. At the same time, we pursue our own path, and in peaceful relationships, we gain insight into those individual paths from the interactions with others.
The latter is true when we experience some disturbance and turn inward to find out what is happening, rather than place blame on the other person for what we are feeling. We learn to examine and recognize information about ourselves from those times of discomfort or feelings of being out of sync. We also grow when, through the sharing from the other person, we hear something we can relate to our own processes that we hadn’t seen or understood before.
Our close relationships can offer a wonderful feedback loop for spreading peace within the larger communities by taking the same practices we master in those interactions and spreading them.
Photo credit: Phil Mayes
Photo note: Mayes Family Little Free Library
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