You don’t build community

A friend recently asked, “How do you build wise communities?” This isn’t quite right, but my response is: You don’t build community.

A tree doesn’t build a forest, a node doesn’t build a network. Community is in-between, what the relationships and connections do outside of our attempts to control, in spite of, and because of, our avoiding, complaining, gossiping, caretaking, and generally being a beautiful mess. Our modern sensibilities resist this. The whole frame of “an individual builds” is in the way of the community trying to coalesce.

Many of the people I see 'building community' are doing so in avoidance of their own existential fears and pains, and it looks structurally very similar to killing yourself with work now to one day retire and enjoy your life: "One day once I've 'built enough' I'll no longer be lonely, socially awkward, excluded, judged, different. I'll no longer be afraid to die alone. I'll no longer need to face society's ills because I'll have built my own little paradise". I think this can work if you're willing and able to give up your autonomy and submit to a fundamentalist religion. Otherwise, a better tack is to face all those fears and feelings, one by one, while you're fully living now, recognizing the communities all around us that are so insanely vast and plentiful that we've taken them for granted.

I am practical, and my actions are less grumpy than my opinions, so here are some things an individual can "do" that people in incredible communities tend to do (but you can’t do them to create the outcome or you’re back in the contradiction):

• Get our false self-concepts out of the way and let happen what's already happening.
• Love our life.
• Do stuff we love, letting it be enough for the sake of itself and not attaching to any outcome (I think this is more common than it sounds: If you love playing soccer, you love playing pickup and often don't even keep track of score).
• Show up: For others, asking for what we need, taking 100% responsibility for our stuff—especially strengthening the great web of communities we're already in and making them healthier.

As Rilke says: We live the questions and one day we might accidentally find ourselves living out the answers.

With love, Jordan