Building Community: A Series

• • I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting lately on the idea of community: what does it mean? Why is it so hard to build sometimes? Where, frankly, has everyone gone? What would it take for my generation to build something again outside of group chats and TikTok trends? The more I’ve thought about it, the more it’s felt like pulling at a loose thread on a shirt: you thought it was just the one, but all of a sudden you keep pulling out more and more until you’ve unraveled quite the mess. You’re looking at this pile of loose threads, trying to figure out if it’s even salvageable, and wondering how it got here from just one loose thread. How have you noticed this trend away from real, tangible community in your life? It’s hard to look around and admit some of the ways our social lives are declining, but as with most things in life, how can we expect to fix it if we don’t admit it’s broken? Take a look around at some of the areas of your life, whether you’re a student, an employee, a member of a club or organization, or someone who frequents public places like gyms, restaurants, school events, or church. Which of the following trends have you noticed:

• College clubs/RSOs with dwindling memberships

• Friends regularly cancelling plans because they “just don’t feel like going”

• Community organizations struggling to recruit and retain members

• At social or work events, the young people are often the first to leave (I’ve seen far more 55-year-olds close down a bar than 25-year-olds)

• At any sort of social event, looking around the room and seeing more people scrolling on their phones than talking to each other

• Leadership positions in local organizations either going unfilled or the same person takes on the same role year after year, either because 1) they don’t want to give it up, or (perhaps more often) 2) no one else is willing to step up and do it.

• Someone leaving a meeting and saying “I’m not sure what these meetings are even for”

• A young person taking initiative in a group steeped in their own habits, and being shut down for bringing up a new way of doing something

If you’re anything like me, you’ve seen many, if not all, of these examples all over the place. I don’t think anyone points at these situations and says “yes, this is what we want our spaces to look like,” yet somehow, so many of our spaces continue to look exactly like this. Dwindling membership, declining engagement, and deepening discontent are becoming the norm in so many social and civic arenas, and I genuinely believe my generation is dissatisfied with these outcomes. But, so many of us feel helpless to do anything about it. Often, conversations like these can turn into a finger pointing contest: the older generations accusing the younger of a failure to care about showing up, and the younger accusing the older of not understanding how the world has changed. I’d like us—whether you’re a younger “us” or an older “us”—to move on from the finger-pointing and move towards an effective dialogue about 1) what the problem even is to begin with, and 2) what to do about it. Again, as with most things in life, I think our failure to agree on the problem is part of the problem itself. Once we’ve laid a foundation of what we’re dealing with, I’d like to propose a few ideas on what would actually make a positive difference. When I started writing about this idea, I was planning on one post. But, the thread kept unravelling… and now we’ve got a series on our hands. There are too many paths to explore, too many boxes to unpack, and ultimately this is too important a topic to do it all in one day. I won’t go so far as to say this is THE most critical challenge facing our society right now, but I’m becoming increasingly convicted that it’s right up there. If we could figure this one out, I think a lot of the other things we complain about would either diminish or disappear altogether. If you agree with me, I hope you’ll join me on this adventure of a series. If you disagree with me, I hope you’ll join me anyway, and I hope you’ll tell me why I’m wrong. Regardless, I hope you’ll tell me what you think and what you’re seeing in your communities. Maybe, just maybe, we can make each of our corners of the world just a little bit more connected—in a real way, not a “I liked your post” type of a way. Share One Thing Differently:Where is an area of your life that’s feeling void of community lately? Have you stopped to ask yourself why that might be? Leave a comment