What does your community smell like?
I remember spending a cold, slushy Scottish day sitting in Taste Coffee. The smell of a small fire filled the cafe. With 8 people — one of them was the barista — reading 8 different books, the tiny place brimmed with humanity. As I turned the pages of Metaphors We Live By my mind was creaking with the kind of casual transformation that happens when we sit in the company of someone else’s ideas.
That was over 10 years ago. I still smell that fire. I still remember the names of the people who I would see again and again in Taste Coffee. I still remember the topics of our well-worn conversations. Since then, more than any other set of recent experiences, the moments I spend at Bluestone Farm have influenced how I reflect on, feel toward, and smell community. Here’s what I’ve learned thus far about what I desire from communities I’ve passed through, joined, cultivated. Consider these shared-thoughts, open for your reflection and response, not hard and fast conclusions.
- Unlike minds with like hearts catalyze strong expressions of interpersonal hospitality.
- We can grow in view of each other if not always together and that’s okay and in some cases preferable.
- The way a community smells will tell me a lot about what its members value.
1. Gather unlike minds with like hearts.
It’s easy to connect with like-minded people. It almost happens naturally. A kind of social gravity brings chosen brothers and sisters close to us. This is why for the last couple of years, I have been life-researching a different anthem — how to gather unlike minds with like hearts.
After two years of intentionally seeking to create this kind of community for myself, I’ve learned that cultivating intergenerational connections is among the quickest ways to connect with someone who is of a like-heart, someone who shares broadly defined values and principles, but whose approach to living out these values and principles differs from my own.
Spending my energy in this way has not only deepened relationships across generations. It has allowed me to act boldly in reaching out across industries and interests to sustain relationships that might have otherwise petered out because of a lack of perceived similarity. It has created opportunities for abundant understanding and curiosity in place of confusion and impatience. Above all else, it has replaced a desire for easy, or easeful, community with a focus on alchemic uni-versity and small, interpersonal hospitalities.
2. Grow in view of each other if not always together.
In an urban area like New York, everyone seems to be inviting, creating, cultivating, building, conjuring, holding-space-for community. I’m happy about this. We are seeking a form of togetherness. If nothing else, our compass points in the right direction. That said, what if we privileged the non-convergent, non-unifying spirit of coming together? What if we focused on the withness instead of the unity of community.
Within a group, communicating our selfish motives and how each of us relates to the whole allows each person to grow in view of each other if not always together. For me, this allows for an expansive feel to community cultivation. It balances out the intimacy of a community’s nurtured closeness and prevents our desire for togetherness from suffocating those small differences that spark creativity and curiosity. If you have ever taken part in a group exercise or activity — take yoga for example — you will recognize the importance of spacing to give participants room to maneuver. Creating distance between participants, while maintaining intellectual and emotional lines of sight, allows for everyone to practice fully and connect with the whole in a way that respects their own desired level of engagement.
3. Pay attention to how your community smells.
Our olfactory memory can trigger vivid images of past experiences. I’m hard pressed to think of one memorable experience that does not have an associated smell. What does your community smell like? That is, what smell comes to mind when you think about the communities lucky enough to count you as a member, cultivator, contributor?
Is it the smell of a bonfire on damp grass? The salty-sea smell of the ocean? The dry, parched sand smell of the desert? The frigid-fresh, wind-whipped smell of fresh powder on a mountain? The plastic smell of a white-walled, dry-erase covered innovation space?
Reflecting back on the programs the prime produce community has hosted over the last couple of years, my nose itches. It remembers smelling the cedar wood of a Japanese hot tub and the dirt covered hands and sweat drenched brows that installed it. It remembers the delicious hot pot dinners that connected people who were meeting for the first time. It remembers the manure, hay, grass smell of farm chores. It remembers the dusty surroundings of the many teas and tours that introduced partners, encouragers, and friends to a guild for 21st century craft.
Whatever they are, the smells of your community point to something that is fundamentally unscalable whether you are trying to scale or not. The romantic in me wants to say that the way your community smells points to the source(s) of its value — digital or material. What are the smells of your community? What do those smells tell you about the values and principles of organization influencing your approach to building movements, teams, collaborations?
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Thank you for reading. Like what you smell? Please give me some sugah and comment below. The partnerships and collaborations that drive my interpersonal and professional relationships motivate me to share these thoughts. If they resonate with you, give me a shout at chris@primeproduce.org.
