Mindset
These days, perhaps just because there is so much more news telling us so, we seem to experience tragedy almost daily. We’ve lost our sensitivity, we have become somewhat numb.
Tragedy has become the grey noise in the background, things that fill the editorial content calendars of all the 24-hour news desks around the globe; tsunamis, earthquakes, school shootings, wars, mass casualty events of every sort.
It’s someone else’s problem. But it isn’t really, if you are involved.
What does that mean, involved?
Does it mean that you know someone, you are related to someone, you knew them once, you’ve met them, or maybe you’ve just heard of them?
Maybe there’s a kinship of experience, something you’ve done, just like the person who’s been lost or injured.
If you are a member of a community, connected to other human beings with whom you share a common bond, you are involved.
We are all individuals, we seek our basis for differentiation. Clothes, accessories, material goods, jobs, tattoos, friends, homes, cars, and so much more, these are the symbols of status, but also the symbols of definition.
Who am I or who am I not?
To be the same is somehow to be branded insignificant, so in our quest to be significant, we accumulate and connect with material items and statements of individuality.
But material goods fade, and in turn require renewed emphasis on the next item of business, a never-ending quest.
However, when we realize that our personal growth is connected directly to the empowerment of contribution, especially contribution to our community, that’s where things get interesting.
This is where philanthropists of certain ilk get it wrong.
A person who espouses to be giving away so much wealth in order to help the underprivileged is often left empty and filling the void with still more donations.
Ultimately the truth of a philanthropic life is giving back to the community with whom you are connected selflessly.
This connection can start in some instances early in life, but even when it doesn’t, establishing a path of contribution and an alignment with real human connection is the ticket to real fulfillment as one matures through life.
The unfettered love of community is the anchor in our lives, at least for those of us fortunate to have a community around us.
Much of this is the centre point of the success of Facebook, where anyone who wants can create a community of connection, or can create an on-line product or service and market, promote, and even deliver it on-line to a community.
Facebook provides the soil for community when used well. However, along with much of social media, FB has also created the side effect of isolation.
We are alone in our community instead of truly connected to it. We now live in virtual communities where there is emotional and intellectual connection, but what seems to be missing is the true mutual suffering of failure, and joy of success that used to occur in physical communities.
Physical community is the real deal. When people suffer and succeed together, build and create together, support one another, and take turns doing so, a bond is forged that is empowering. It empowers each individual to reach higher, or to overcome adversities that alone may seem impossible.
That is the power of real community.
The downside of community is our attachment to it, our fear of being different, separated, or ostracized from it. And unfortunately, social media communities have made this all too easy to make happen. One damaging post, statement, or image can result in the true dissolution of someone’s connection to their community.
This has been the unfortunate side-effect forced upon our children who are even more influenced by the attachment to their social community before they have suffered the slings and arrows of adulthood.
Adults are not immune, quite a lot of the mental illness we see today leading to mass shootings or terror events can be traced back to the person’s disenfranchisement from society at large. Alone, lost, and disempowered, one seeks to find some significance in the trauma of their own end.
Even still, when such tragedy occurs, the communities with deep roots of connection are the ones that somehow find the silver lining of “one for all” that doesn’t replace the lost and injured, but consoles the pain and suffering of the moment, and the moments to come.
We are better when we are a member of a community, individual in our character and aspirations, but aligned on our concerns and connection.
Finding and forging your connection to community is an essential part of life, and the more you allow yourself to commit to the messiness of social connection, the more you will thrive in life and love.
