Community according to a basic google search is defined as, “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.”
We are surrounded by communities. Our first community is one that we have no option in choosing, our family. We are born into community whether we like it or not. And within that community we are raised being part of other communities. And within those communities we are involved without really having to do anything, just by being there we are automatically part of that community.
At times we may not have control of our surroundings and who or what we would like to be surrounded by, but eventually we adapt and we naturally become part of whatever community we are surrounded by. In a way it’s really a beautiful thing, we are designed to fit in. We can be anybody that we want to be, we can think anything about ourselves but once we are surrounded by others we become part of that.
We naturally hear older and much wiser people say, “be yourself.” What if you are not accepted or loved within the community that you were placed? Your since of self and who you are defined as being is vulnerable and easily shattered. I believe our first tendency is to shift who we are to fit the community that denies us, to do whatever we can to be accepted by the people that told us who we were in the first place. Acceptance is a priority we must have to survive, like a shelter over our head in a fierce storm we can deal with what pounds us repeatedly if we know that at the end of the day we are accepted by our community.
If we do not belong to a community we are lost and in search of any kind of acceptance. We may become unrealistic and outside of our normal morals or routine to find some way to accept ourselves. Not belonging is as if you were in an endless maze with no food and freezing temperatures. Your only way to survive is to convince yourself that you are warm, and you’re eating healthy amounts of food, skipping along happily lost with no care in the world. In reality you are in dire need of your most basic needs and slowly dying while looking like a lunatic.
We may be completely satisfied and accepted in our community. We’re surrounded by so many communities within a day that we almost lose track of how to act in accordance to each one. Communities are powerful and grow beyond the individual people that formed it in the first place. So when one community does not accept another community it strangely and passionately unites each independent opposing communities at a rapid pace.
We may sit with our community that accepts us and loves us and think out loud and discuss things like, “how could they do this or think of doing that?” We may distort our faces in disgust and agree with our community on how much we disagree with a different community and that becomes the identity of who our community is, it’s what our opposing community is not.
I sit and I write this thinking of specific kids that live each day in a community. This community is unique, it’s a community formed by being denied by communities. They share the hurt of not being accepted and their community seems to be within that never ending maze, searching for heat and searching for food. Most of these kids will find a community and they will be accepted. And those of us that haven’t felt what these kids have felt will look at that community. The community that accepted the rejected kid, and we, along with our communities, will not understand.
