Finding Our People

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How our community nurtures our creating

I spent yesterday with my book club, words I never thought I'd utter. 

I don't have a problem with books. I was an avid reader as a child and young adult then reading for pleasure got replaced with reading for information. I'm still working on reintegrating. 

It's more that I'm not always a fan of clubs. I'm not a joiner, not one to go along with the crowd. I've got some rough edges. I'm not always tame enough for polite society. And I'm not one to spend a lot of time talking about something that doesn't feel important. Small talk has never been my game.

Give me a well-oiled collaboration creating something profound that I deeply care about and I'm all in.

But my book club is an amazing group of women. I was invited to join by one of the first people I really connected with in Florida, the first person that felt like one of my people. I said yes because it was her and I'm so grateful I did because now I belong to a group of women who are all my people.

Four of us are former teachers. All of us work or have worked in professions supporting people. We're musicians, artists, actors, poets. We share the same hunger for a world that is just and compassionate, where diversity is honored for its gifts, where everyone gets to have the joy of being who they really are. We put our energies into helping build this world. 

And in their company, I am uplifted. I feel safe. I feel seen. I feel heard.

Humans are social creatures by design. It's in our makeup to seek belonging. The absence of belonging for so many has created epidemic loneliness. So much so that both the UK and Japan have appointed Ministers of Loneliness to address this grave public health issue.

Feeling lonely (which is different from being alone) can weaken us. It can cause us to see ourselves as broken, insignificant, insufficient. It disconnects us from our power to create.

Here in the US, loneliness is complicated by our fierce independent streak. We laud those who "make it on their own," that lone cowboy crossing the plains. We talk about "pulling yourself up by your own boot straps" (which presumes you have boots to begin with which you probably didn't make yourself). 

But who really does that? How many people achieve something significant or flourish as people without support from and connection with others? 

We might be able to survive on our own for a period of time but, for the vast majority of us, thriving requires community.

One of the things I cherish about the deep friendships that are the inner circle of my community is how they hold up to time apart. It can be months between conversations with a beloved friend or years between being in the same room and yet the moment we reconnect it is as if no time has passed. Intimacy is woven into the cloth of our relationship. 

I've also experienced the joy of instant connection with someone I've just met who turns out to be another one of my people. It amazes me when I realize we're thirty minutes into knowing each other and already having conversations from the core of our souls. 

Our book group really jelled over our first conversation about a book we didn't like. I kicked it off by saying I found each of the characters so annoying I wanted to line them up and slap them all one way then back the other. (I am not prone to violence but these were wildly unsympathetic characters.) My comment opened up laughter as others shared their similar take. We now trusted each other. We could say the awkward or unpleasant things out loud.

That's the thing about being with your people. You can be vulnerable, transparent, intimate. You have affinity. You share love.

And these VITAL energies feed the creation of worlds. Because creation of something significant requires us to explore our pain as well as our joy. It asks us to dance with our insecurities - am I "enough" for what is in front of me? It asks us to work through our weaknesses and leverage our strengths. 

And I know for me, my community sees my strengths so much more clearly than I see them. My community can shift me out of obsessing about my weaknesses. My community reassures me that what I long to create isn't impossible. They stand with me, holding my ache and amplifying the significance of the world I crave. They reduce my pain and magnify my joy.

As you seek to create your world, take stock of your community. Do you have one? Do you need to grow it? Do you need to spend more time in it? Do you need to open up into it - expanding the transparency and vulnerability, trusting the intimacy, feeding your creating with affinity and love? 

What is one way this week that you might connect with, be fed by your existing community? If you're in search of community, what's one step you might take to find your people?