On community and the unexpected...
This is kind of a weird year to talk about community, isn’t it? In so many ways, we’re further away from each other than we’ve ever been. Communities have been physically distanced, in some cases fractured, and no matter how hard we try? A “zoom happy hour” will just never be the same (not even speaking to zoom church, zoom conventions, zoom funerals….)
It can be easy - oh goodness, especially in a US election year - to see how far we are from each other (and in this case I mean ideologically/emotionally/spiritually, not just physically) right now. And part of the reason that can feel so hard is because we are literally wired for connection, as humans. We want to belong, we want to be held inside something bigger than ourselves, and it might feel like mental gymnastics to imagine that for ourselves right now.
EXCEPT HERE’S THE THING…
We ARE the community. The community is us! Community is anywhere we actively create it right now, and even if it doesn’t look like we expect it to or like it has in the past, that actually doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Case in point: the image at the top of this post. This is a DIY sign made by one of my new best friends. And I throw that line around a lot (because #community), but this is a friendship I never would have had without the covids. In the weird and dark months at the beginning of all of this, things shifted and moved to create a tight little pod of us who were all attending (or teaching, ahem Coach Caron) zoom fitness daily at our gym (shout out to Madlab for keeping my sanity).
“We ARE the community. The community is us!”
This was made for me this week - to unofficially officially “reserve” my spot with my girls, on days that husband and I have a mad switch over in the morning.
(Oh yeah - nothing worth doing is going to just “flow” in 2020 is it? Being “back at the gym” means that every Tuesday morning both husband and I attend classes, which means that we have exactly 15 minutes for him to clean his equipment, drive home, me to drive there, and get in my spot before class starts. We live about 5 minutes drive from the gym so it’s possible, but tight. Side note: we are equally important, and so is our mental and physical health and so we have equally divided the week and pre-schedule every part of it to prioritize exercise.)
I wouldn’t have had the chance to grow as close to this little posse without this year. I wouldn’t have had the chance to get to know the incredible women who I lift with thrice weekly in the way that I do right now if not for zoom classes (#adorkables for life!), and if not for the world coming to a weird standstill.
It’s a beautiful reminder that we get to choose and create, and when we see it we can run flailing with joy straight into it. If you’re lucky, it will result in your very own sign not sign. And a pretty sweet crew to go along with it.
