Finding Your Tribe/Creating Your Community

Everybody wants to belong to a group, whether it's a tribe, a community, a flock, or a gaggle. Finding a place where we fit and feel at home seems to be the task of this century. It is reflected in the way we cluster around causes, grouping by ethnicity, religion, region, and even age. We're known by labels like seniors, baby boomers, the x-y-z generation, young adults or youth. We're urbanites, suburbanites, and a little bit or a lot country. We're fat or skinny, fit or not, the "biggest loser," or losers in general.

Unfortunately, just because we fit the label or slide into the slot doesn't mean we have automatically found our place under the sun any more than being born into a family means we are automatically wanted, loved, understood or honored.

Building your community requires more than gathering together a group of people with common characteristics and interests. It requires thought, effort, and a willingness to be responsible for your choices. A friend and therapist recommended the first place to start for a healthy community would be to reduce the number in your clan to only those who are equally invested in maintaining the existing relationships as you are. For example, do they take their turn planning, hosting, supporting, and making themselves available to others as they are able at least as much as you do. Not all the time, mind you--we all have peaks and valleys in our abilities to serve--but on an over all equal footing.

Second, seek out those with a predominately positive attitude, again taking into account the peaks and valleys in everyone's life and the need to vent in the valleys. Watch out for those who do more than report what is happening during the down times, who rehearse it over and over investing huge amounts of dark energy in the topic and actively recruiting others to join in.

Creating a community should be about inclusion not exclusion. Look for those with that attitude. Everyone has something to offer. Are you willing to look for it? Encourage and invite it? A community should be a living, vital, growing entity.

Have a purpose. It doesn't have to be a lofty esoteric purpose. Laughing together is a great purpose. Relaxation through fun and companionship with others is a laudable goal. But upping the anti to a greater purpose like doing good can be a fine thing. It can nourish and enrich your community. How about walking for MS or breast cancer, or gathering clothing for the homeless shelter or half way houses?

One community with the goals of supporting each other, having fun, and encouraging personal growth was established by Carroll Hofeling Morris of Green Valley, Arizona. Finding herself without the kind of supportive and eclectic community she desired, she placed a notice at the local community center advertising a gather of good women. Potluck and fresh ideas requested but not required. As a result of that one notice, once a month a varying group gathers at the Morris home for pot luck--usually vegetarian--good conversation, and some activity that encourages thought, teaches a skill, or increases enlightenment.

But most of all community can and should be about transformation. From loneliness to inclusion, from indifference to involvement, from living fearfully to knowing someone's got your back. Jack. What a great idea. I'm looking for community. How about you?