It took me many years before I started any conversation with;
“My Dad used to say… ”
Something about growing up in the 50’s and 60’s that nudged me and some of my generation to resist adopting the norms that my Dad had been raised within.
He was born in 1919, his parents were born in the 18 hundreds, and his grandparents were raised slap bang in the middle of what gets termed in the UK as the Victorian period.
That experiment the UK experienced during the colonial industrial years, was more and more obviously failing by the time I was born, and recognised by many as a greedy grab, managed by power hungry selfish and insecure white men.
I rebelled in any and many ways in my teens and 20’s.
I was loud and noisy.
And, my dad saw through the fiction that described the British experiment as progress, long before I was born, and rebelled quietly and actively advocating for those who often contributed the most and received the least.
Anyway, that tangent leads me to this;
My Dad once said to me, as we were sitting in a car and I was complaining about the slow traffic;
” There are two boxes that have changed the ways we humans live and understand being human Mark, cars and televisions.”
” Ok Dad, how do you reckon that works then?”
” Well, we used to travel together, and, we used to entertain together, travel and entertainment were community activities a few decades ago, now we sit in our front rooms and watch television, and sit in our cars and travel separately.
When we travel with others and entertain with others… people we might not meet otherwise… we learn about difference, we learn about sharing space together, and we have the opportunity to recognise our common humanity.
These days I am aware that people shout at each other from their cars, and shout at the TV when they see something they don’t agree with.”
I’m not sure these would be his words exactly, he probably said less, but the point he made, was that when we interact with others in person in shared public spaces, we learn from each other and make connections as human beings, tapping into behaviours of connection we have practiced for hundreds of thousands of years.
This meandering stream of thoughts and feelings and memories flow from my desire to write here around creating community.
Building community often seems such a big task, finding physical space, planning, designing, gathering resources, collaborating with people across a wide variety of skills… and yet… I feel that community happens all around me every time someone smiles at me, every time someone asks me for help with something, every time I ask for help with something.
And, in this more than human world, every time I sit beneath a tree and acknowledge the shade it offers, the oxygen it produces and the gentle movements and sounds it choreographs in collaboration with the breeze… this awareness is creating community.
Community, collaboration, communication, connection, love, hugs and peace… all coalesce around and within me with every breath I take, and, sometimes, in this extractive and dominance modern culture, I get distracted, doubt myself and forget who and what I am.
Creating community, making connections with others, in whatever way this shows up, is an act of reclaiming our humanity, thats what we do, us humans.
As I get lost, isolate, and then reconnect, with my self or others, I repeatedly become human again, share my humanity, recognise yours, occasionally get distracted and forget to sit under that tree, and the relish within the worlds this tree and their ancestors have created and share… then I come home again, notice my in breath, let go of my out breath, and I become human again… and breath… and repeat.
I recently came across an example of community building, you can find out more about them using this Instagram link;
https://www.instagram.com/solarpunkldn/
In the spaces we meet up, we practice caring and sharing, learning and unlearning, and are open to ways we can all create community using imagination, collective activities, and… by noticing options for tapping into new and old wisdoms.
There are moments and spots where I can see, hear and feel the solidarity and the stickiness of community, sitting and dancing and walking with the smooth and the rough.
And my intention to follow the directions my attention leads me in, is primed for noticing, observing, those others moving towards communities of nonviolence, peace and common land as something that is worked for and honoured.
It’s within these nascent shared community spaces that our solidarity frees us to be us, you to be you, me to me, and we… together… to be more than the sum of our parts.
I’ll keep sharing these community moments and spots that I find, and if you are finding your self and others in solidarity and community, let me know what and where works for you and yours, and, if you wish, I will share that with me and mine, until maybe, one day, we will all become home here on this planet again, sharing the comfort and care it offers us with every breath, as a celebration.