I’ve been thinking a lot about community this week, because my experience with the word “community” is that it’s quite romanticized.
Folks think that community is when all the neighbors step out of their houses, watching the birds sing and the flowers bloom, holding hands and sharing a potluck.
Which happens on occasion, and it’s kind of lovely.
But the reality is that the problem with community is that it’s composed of humans.
And humans… we tend to be incredibly difficult people.
We tend to be hard to get along with.
We can be really shitty at communicating.
And we are so quick to make assumptions.
What I mean by that is that we can’t really know how somebody is feeling, or what their real story is, unless they’ve actually told us.
For example, I’ve been part of communities where I felt like everybody in the group had these very deep, intense, long histories of friendship with each other, and I felt like an outcast.
And then, as I started talking to people, the reality was that nobody really knew each other very well. They were just gathered together around one purpose.
And all the stories that I told myself about being the odd one out were simply not true.
In another instance, I was semi-involved in a situation where friends had planned a trip.
They wanted to invite friends that were close to them, but not close to the original group going on the trip. And they assumed it would be no problem to just add them.
Needless to say, all hell broke loose.
Mind you, these are people in their 50s who have been friends for over 40 years, and all of a sudden, the dynamics were like middle school.
In another situation, a community came together to help find a friend who had gone missing.
And while the level of intimacy among the community members varied dramatically, we were all clear on the one purpose: trying to find this missing loved one.
And I’m sure in that situation, tempers flew high and challenges arose, not because I know any specific details, but because that’s a given anytime humans are involved.
I share this with you today because community is so fucking annoying.
And it can be really easy to want to hide under a rock and just do everything ourselves.
But what’s real is that we are social beings, and we can’t expect to survive or thrive on our own.
That’s the lie that the system we live in tells us, and it has never been, and will never be, true.
At the same time, being in community is not this pleasant, sunshine-and-lollipops, rainbowy thing that we sometimes fantasize about.
Although it can feel like that.
More often than not, it takes a lot of tolerance, generosity, and a capacity to give that is probably more work than we had in mind, and riskier than we wanted to admit.
But there’s no other way to really be a full human.
So the way I’m thinking about community these days is that a community is any group of people that comes together for a particular purpose.
My community of neighbors is tied by the fact that we all want to live in a nice neighborhood.
My community of friends has a shared history, common ground.
So I want you to think about your community, or your communities, and not discount them.
Because these are not always the people who hold your deepest secrets, or the ones you can call at 2am (although I hope you have some of those, and if you don’t, you might want to start working on that).
But it’s really what sociologists call “the strength of weak ties” that keeps us going through the challenges and turmoil of modern life.
So:
What are you bringing to your community today? And how can you make it as enriching and nourishing as possible, not just for yourself, but for others?
One of my favorite communities, of course, is the one where we work magic together.
My Liberation Magic students always get incredible results because they learn about what’s called the nature of reality: the real cause and effect of how we can make shit happen around us, and how we can feel great in the process.
But that’s not even what most people think the best part is.
The best part is the community that gets built around the students, and the camaraderie that emerges when folks are trying to practice new skills and do things that some of them have never done before.
It always warms my heart when I get feedback about being able to build community, or hold space for community, in a way that makes people feel really happy to be there, and seen, and heard, and whole.
And if that’s something you’ve been craving, a place where you don’t have to do this alone, and where the point isn’t perfection but real transformation, you can just reply and let me know.
Courage, truth, and infinite love,
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I don’t believe in magic, but I know that it works!
Magic is not a belief system, it’s a practice that works. Don’t believe me? Come try it out. If it doesn’t work, you lose nothing. But if it does… your dream life is about to begin!
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