Creating Meaningful Community in a Transient World

Community, Journeying
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“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” 

Desmund Tutu

Longing for connection is part of our human experience; we are wired to connect. As I left the high-tech corporate world a mentor recommended that I reach out to a friend of his to explore my interest in community. I was particularly curious about learning that arises in conversations and exploring further what I had learned from Etienne Wenger’s community of practice model. What drew me in me was both my love of learning something I hadn’t yet seen thanks to someone else’s presence in my life and my own longing for connection and belonging.

What this friend said to me that day caught me by surprise, planted a seed and I’ve been curious about it ever since. During the previous year, I facilitated a community of practice bringing together team members from across the organization I worked for to share experiences and knowledge and to learn from each other. I wanted to do more of this with other organizations; I wanted to bring people together and create spaces for learning together and community. With this intention in mind, I sat in the coffee shop hoping to hear some sage advice to support my efforts forward. 

What Stephen shared that day was his perspective that it isn’t possible to create community in a work setting. How is it not possible? He went on to describe the temporal nature of community in organizations and how it doesn’t build trust and true belonging. We live in a transient world where people are joining and leaving communities every day and commitment to communities waning. Many of us have experienced spending years of starting your day with a morning check-in with your teammate or classmate and one day they leave and your daily connection and morning ritual is gone. Knowing that these connections are temporal, I notice people hesitating to step in fully, the neighbor who moves in, doesn’t meet or connect with the neighbors, or the teammate that fulfills their job responsibilities without ever sharing a meal with a colleague. Oh my, what did this mean and how was I going to move ahead?

My own experiences to date pretty much mirrored much of what Stephen shared. I had changed schools, moved towns, lived in and outside the US, left jobs, leaving and losing communities I had built and invested in. I also stayed in a school community when everyone I started with left. I was a member of a community that got divided as the founding leaders decided to go their separate ways. I committed to an organization as it merged into another. Relationships ended and years of holiday rituals and connections were suddenly gone. Friends have moved. Colleagues have been asked to leave. I lost a partner when health challenges arose. I have welcomed new community members; some have fully stepped in, while others have stepped in with reservations. And after some time, I also noticed myself entering new communities with both trepidation and longing. I found it all a bit heartbreaking.  

The following years I put my desire for community development to the side and found myself on a learning journey. I took my visual and instructional design skills and had the pleasure of consulting to an incredible network of thought leaders and master practitioners in the field of facilitative leadership, conflict resolution, dialogue, rites of passage and creating learning environments in education, corporate, political, and non-profit settings. I was SO grateful for all that I was able to absorb during those years and the willingness of these amazing individuals to mentor me in their work as I supported them.

I finally found my way back to community years later. This time designing an online space for an educational community to meet outside their courses and to connect and support each other. Thanks to the previous years I had some good clues on how to proceed. In addition, a seed was planted in me during my conversation with Stephen. I’ve been holding the tension of two realities, our need for connection and belonging and the transient and complex world we live in. How do we create deep meaningful connections and community that honors and supports us in these transient settings and world? I don’t have it all figured out and I have learned a few things so far:

  • Community is about people, not organizations, legal structures, interests, and missions. Community is about connection, relating, caring, support, working together, and companionship along our lives journeys. Don’t confuse the structure, space, and domain with the purpose of community; community is for us. If we don’t show up in the community space, there is no community. Community spaces and structures simply give us access to each other and give us the capacity to do many incredible things we can’t do on our own.
  • Together we are a community. And within that community you have individual connections.  Over time these connections form your own circle of community, they aren’t a community in and of themselves they are your community.
  • Give people the space to grow, develop and change.  Community needs a domain, a focus. Clarity of focus helps people find their place in the community to share their gifts and choose to engage. Community must welcome change and evolution.  Over time your role will shift and evolve. Community spaces themselves must shift and evolve and be redefined. Be willing to expand and grow your community.   
  • It is important to acknowledge membership shifts in each community. People come and go. Both new and existing members bring value. Support transitions as people enter leave and shift their roles in communities. You never really leave a community you simply step into a different role; you are always connected.  
  • We belong to multiple communities, and you don’t have to choose between them. At different times different communities will take on more of a priority. Your role, needs and gifts you have to share and receive in each are different. One of your gifts is your connection and bridge you bring to all of your other communities.
  • Community is worth it regardless of the heartbreak and challenges.  We need each other. We are not supposed to do this all on our own. We thrive when we are connected to a thriving community.

Some how these lessons seem so simple. Having learned these tidbits I find myself more engaged, more willing to participate, and more connected. Although it’s not easy, it’s surely worth it and I am grateful. If we can build community within a transient world I feel hopeful that we can regain trust and our sense of belonging. There is a lot of work still to be done and I look forward to what is ahead, creating space for community and learning in my life.  

The Gift of Strangers

Directions, Strangers
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To my surprise, complete strangers have had a powerful impact on the direction of my life. I often remember one of those times in my mid-twenties standing in line at a local grocery store.

I stopped into a grocery store across town to quickly pick up a few things. Standing in line holding what I came for, an elder woman got in line behind me. She stood there for a moment, and she suddenly began to speak. I still remember exactly where she started our conversation. “These are my dancing shoes” she started.  She pointed to her shoes and proceeded to tell me how she and her husband went out dancing a couple of days a week and how much joy it brought to her and her relationship. She loved dancing with him. I loved listening to her.

Soon enough I was at the front of the checkout and the cashier and I were finishing our exchange. I turned to the elder woman behind me in line to say goodbye and wish her well. As I turned to walk away, she said to me, “If you don’t love him, don’t marry him”. Her comment landed and I froze for a moment. It had been less than a year since I had moved to this Colorado town. What had brought me here was a relationship. Oddly I had never mentioned my relationship to this stranger in line with me.

He and I met in the mid-west.  I had moved to there for a job with hopes that with my additional languages and global experience, they would move me overseas eventually. I had grown up overseas and had this vision that would be my life. While I waited for my opportunity, I decided to keep my language skills up and take a French class and that is where we met. I began working long hours and didn’t make it to class much and we lost touch.

We met again almost two years later at work this time. We began dating. Several months went by and I realized it was time for a change. After three years, it was obvious that my language skills were losing their edge and the company didn’t want/need me overseas. I was burnt out, disappointed, and decided I needed to find another path if I were to get overseas. We were going our separate ways.  I headed to Vermont for a Master’s program and he decided to transfer to Colorado.

On my way to Vermont, I made a U-turn. It dawned on me that I wanted relationships and people to be an important part of my life and I was walking away from that, so I headed to Colorado and we moved in with each other. 

Now here I was, almost a year later, standing in the grocery store taking in her comment. She was right. Although I loved this man, I didn’t quite in the way that I could imagine myself as a wife. Soon after he and I were heading our separate ways again.

I never regretted choosing that relationship over the possibility of a path overseas. It was exactly what I needed then; it just wasn’t what I needed forever. To this day I am grateful for that poignant and timely message from the sweet dancing stranger.

I am so grateful for all the strangers who have stepped into my life and stood out like signposts, pointing me along the way. Sometimes it was a question they asked, a story they told, or a comment they made. At other times it was simply who they were, how they stood in the room, a gesture they made, or their careful attention placed on something. Thanks for being there and the gifts you brought me.

Maybe someday, when I am older, I will be in the grocery store with my dancing shoes on and simply say the right thing at the right time to the young woman in front of me to support her along her journey.