Building Community: One of life’s greatest skills
Growing up in a large family and in a tightly knit religious community I was used to being around groups of people all the time. I thought that's just the way life is, but now looking back on it, I realize many of those people were so dedicated to that church community because they understood from experience how necessary it was to a surviving, let alone thriving life. They had seen people fall on hard times, get very sick and possibly die and they witnessed how supportive and beautiful good community can be.
I also know people who had terrible conflict, and had been profoundly traumatized in communities, and therefore, mostly gave up and became deeply distrustful of larger groups of people.
Every day you should realize life is a wager, and you're placing a bet with your time, attention and action.
When you work on a hospital floor with multiple patients and nurses, you often do not know day-to-day who you will be working with. Hospitals float medical staff between units to make up for staffing shortages. This compounds how difficult it is to work in a high stress environment. It's already hard enough because you're faced with new patients and new problems every day. And mistakes often, if not almost always, affect somebody's health and well-being. Then add in the fact that you don't know who you're gonna work with and that you might get stuck working with some fairly unreliable, disagreeable or incompetent people that make your shift a greater hell than it already may be. This is a conundrum I faced again and again.
At one point in my medical career there I started to realize I needed to pull people closer to me to keep me sane in a job I mostly loathed. I worked 5pm to 5am, so at 8pm before restaurants would close, I began to almost literally run out on my very short dinner break to grab takeout, sometimes just for one coworker friend or another. But then it began to be something I involved everybody who wanted to participate. The food was a common experience between all of us that was reliable, in an environment that was often chaos. Nurses would start coming in and asking me first thing "are we getting food tonight?” with a spark of optimism and immediately hand me money. Other units started to become envious that we had this reliable custom and ritual.
I began to realize over time the power of taking the initiative to bring people together. I had so often relied on other leaders and community organizers to provide social circles that I moved in for nearly 30 years of my life. Gathering around that meal, even for the 20 to 30 minutes we had to eat created more of a "we're in this together," kind of attitude. It made bearable what was at times an oppressive and depressing amount of stress. It made people feel more of a sense of camaraderie. It made us feel less alone in our experience.
And now, this is no surprise to those who've known me, or taking any of my classes: I lean towards creating and building community. Not that there won't be problems or disagreements, but being tied to some kind of community is an anchor for our psyches and pillar of health. It's very clear from the worried dialogue happening in our society now, that our interpersonal relationships are insidiously deteriorating. It's also heartening that people are so fervently having these discussions because it shows they care. This can't be overstated. In general people really do care. Cynicism be damned
Setting aside causes, here’s the crux of the problem: we have fewer friends that we see in person than ever before. This definitely contributes to the crescendo of invective that plagues our dialogues. It's a human problem that we humans absolutely can , and really must, solve.
Friendships and intimate relationships can be the genesis, or the result, of good community; but that's not community's only utility. The community is about looking out for one another, having a wide circle of acquaintances, creating and sustaining a culture around shared values. It's about creating safety. It's about problems being easier to solve because you're not in it alone. Ultimately, it's about creating some reliable semblance of predictability in a world full of unforeseeable tragedy.
Of course, the challenge is in the how. How do you build community?
Thats for part two