The Power of Community — And How We’re Losing It
When was the last time you said hello to a stranger as you walked past them?
For most people it would be hard to recall and a lot of us would hardly make such a gesture. In the modern western world, especially in big cities, it would seem strange to spark up a conversation with someone who you didn’t know, or wasn’t serving you something behind a counter.
I remember recently I went for a walk in my local area and a few people smiled and said hello as I walked past. On the surface it was such a simple gesture, yet it had a pretty big impact on my mood. It made me feel connected somehow, and put a smile on my face.
I think it’s true that all of us hold some sort of mask or facade over our true selves. When we meet someone new we refer to the basic set of questions and answers that we’re accustomed to, making our interactions slightly robotic. Hi, how are you? What do you do? Where do you live? We like to get to know each other on the surface, as who we think we are, before we start to reveal our true selves. As we spend more time with each other, however, we start to relax and become more natural, revealing who we really are; all of us have experienced this at some point. Some people might be more reserved than others and take longer to reveal this part of themselves, where as some might seem more outgoing from the get go. Either way, this natural place of who we are is always there, and we have built walls around it for many different reasons.
We all have a fear of judgement. Revealing ourselves is vulnerable and opens us up to all sorts of critical opinions, one reason why we aren’t to quick to open up to other’s. A sense of fear around the population is also cultivated in most of our mainstream media. We are a lot more likely to hear of something bad happening in our communities than a random act of kindness and because of this it seems like people are doing terrible things all the time, when in fact it has actually been proven that it is one of the safest times to live in history. Another reason is that we just don’t have time, and with so much entertainment at our doors it’s likely we’d rather spend free time watching Netflix with a partner than getting to know our next door neighbour, for example.
In our fast pace and fairly secluded lifestyles we’ve started to let go of a sense of community, whether it be from our technologically inspired lifestyles, or out of a sense of fear. Everyone seems to be living in their own little bubble, revealing a very shallow part of themselves to the people around them, while reserving their true self for a select few, maybe friends or family. When you walk past the thousands of people in a city street it almost seems as if they’re not real; our faces are straight and narrow, and barely a smile crosses our lips. With more of us spending social time in a digital world, and communities continually growing in size, could it still be possible to cultivate a sense of connection offline?
As I was saying before, interactions with strangers are very rare, but when they do happen it can lift both people’s moods and create a strong sense of connection with each other, something all of us crave. If one interaction like this can have such a small effect then imagine if it happened all the time; how good we would feel to have real life connection to the people around us.
Internet platforms can provide safe spaces to communicate with other’s and share opinions, but there is something about real life interaction that brings a sense of purpose and acceptance that can’t be reproduced online. When you make that connection with a stranger you don’t feel so alone anymore; you realise that we are all in this together, and that life doesn’t have to be so hard. This type of feeling is what makes us human and we’ve needed to feel this connection ever since we’ve lived in tribes.
At our core, we are all the same, all having the same experience of life. The distance we sometimes feel from each other is a result of lack of connection and the understanding that this connection gives us; that we are supported, and equal. We have attempted to reproduce this online through social media and other avenues but it has failed to create the same effect; in fact, it is common to bring negative side effects rather than positive ones? We have so many things, so much entertainment, but without real connection and culture, something that is starting to fade away as we move forward, it won’t amount to much.
If all of us could develop the courage to be open and free with ourselves, rather than hiding behind our masks, or spend a little more time attempting to interact with others, life would become so much more joyous. Our barriers of fear and self consciousness are the only things restricting us. By approaching each other with an attitude of love rather than fear or judgement, we could create a paradise.