Do you love this place? Do you love the communities you are in? If so, or if not, this is the best way I have found to help myself become a little more mindful about the ways that I engage.
A thought exercise for community
Sometime leave the house a little early and watch your town wake up. Do you love this place? What is it up to taken as a whole united entity? And is that a good thing?
What are all of us collectively up to in our families, jobs, and towns? What are we trying to do? And are we succeeding and failing in our efforts? If we are or not, what are the results intended and unintended?
What does it mean to belong to a community?
Do you have to defend everything done by your town and stand proud of everything its people do in order to love it?
How would your workplace or town change if you loved it despite its flaws — without ignoring or excusing them?
What about online groups — those groups in the virtual spaces and head spaces we occupy. Do you have to approve everyone and everything you find there to belong?
Malignant community
Lockstep unity and dogged defense of every dark corner are not required of you. If your groups try to say that you must agree with them in everything — get out! Get out now!
Loving your communities
Love of a place, a people, a community, never means that we close our eyes, keep them closed, and insist that we know everything is great. Love of a community does not mean identifying every form of dissent as hatred and enmity.
Love means hoping for the best, and working to make it come true. It means having a willingness to correct errors with patience.
If you love something well, you do it with wisdom. You love it with open heart and open eyes. You love it even with its flaws.
Do you know you’re better than every community, hold yourself separate, and plan to abandon them at the first sign of trouble? Then you are not yet part of it.
Do you believe that your town, family, employer, online group has to do what you say? Then you are not part of that community, or you won’t be for long. Or you are its tyrant!
Unless you are willing to give something up for your community, you do not have one. Unless you are willing to stand up to it, it is in danger of becoming unworthy of your love.
Anger within your community
If you lose your temper with your community, and find yourself angry all the time, that’s a symptom of spending too much time algorithm-curated feeds. They profit by engagement. And negative emotion is better at driving engagement. Or maybe it was users there. Either way, you’re being trolled or played for someone else’s amusement or profit.
Reset on anger for the sake of the communities you are defending
Go outside. Get away from social media. Don’t check.
It’s good for you, and by helping you become less reactive, it helps the communities around you: family, work, school, neighborhood, and even your online communities on the platforms that help to create this mess!
Watch the sunrise over your city, your town, your neighborhood, your field, your home. Take a little time to let things quiet down, and your priorities will straighten out. That is partly because you will have a chance to think more about what is important in the long-term instead of what is trending this hour.
You will feel better. Your communities need that.
Making your reset matter to the people you care about — your communities
And then consider where you belong. Every good thing cannot have your allegiance. You will have to focus. Think about what makes the most difference.
Finally, come down from the mountain. Come back from the beach. Come out of the woods, a little more prepared to make a little better difference.
This is a note to myself — an open letter from me to me on what I should probably be doing.
What do you think? You can join me on Instagram and Twitter or drop a comment here, and let me know.