We Say We Want Community, But That’s a Crock
The bartender pours a Blue Moon and hands it to my mentor and long time friend, Josh, while the look of disgust I shoot him immediately conveys my thoughts on his decision. “Hey, if you prefer your steak from Steak-N-Shake then, by all means, own it…but don’t be mad at me because I know Ruth Chris makes a better steak” I think internally when he sees my disapproval and smiles.
“So you were telling me about this new environment for 20-somethings you’ve come up with.”
“Right.”
“And it’s like what we’ve done before? But a little different this go round?”
He sips his beer and eyes me over the rim while I launch into an explanation of my latest venture.
“You and I both know the Millenial Generation craves community, right?” Josh rolls his eyes, but I continue, “I wanted to create an environment where they’re comfortable, but at the same time ask more questions, have break out groups, and force them into the community and friendships they desperately want. If we can guide them into…”
“That’s bullshit.” He emphatically states. He has no follow up and proceeds to continue sipping his drink again.
I stare at him puzzled, to which he puts down his drink and clears his throat.
“Ben…..EVERYONE, and I mean mostly everyone, says that they want community. Most people can’t go through life alone, so it’s true that from a psychological aspect we need and crave relationships. But that doesn’t mean we really want them. We say we do, but that’s to mask our hidden desire.”
“And what’s that?”
“Comfort.” He says with venom in his voice. “Even more so than friendship and community we crave comfort. We want relationships to be on our watch and under our control, and it better not take any work to grow deep. But community requires vulnerability, and that’s just not comfortable, is it? So what you have are hoards of 20-year olds floating around complaining about how they want deep friendships when none of us really want to go deep. We just want to say that we tried to go deep and people didn’t respond. The truth is, it probably got awkward, and we weren’t comfortable sharing the dark or hard things we’re currently experiencing when it came time. We are, sadly, creatures of comfort over community.”
Josh picks up his Blue Moon, stares at it for a moment, and then toasts the invisible comfort monster that’s probably sitting in multiple chairs at the bar.
FAKE AUTHENTICITY
I love to talk about the areas of my life where there was addiction or struggle, but that I’ve long since conquered. I can talk about war and PTSD or some of my past addictions in a social setting without batting an eye. People love a story with a happy ending.
And here’s the amazing part: I sound authentic. Vulnerable even.
It sounds like I’m sharing intimate details about my life, but the truth is, those are areas that aren’t even a struggle for me anymore. Sometimes they’re small snapshots of a much larger picture I’m keeping you from seeing.
And why do I do this?
Because I want to sound authentic in hopes that people will be authentic with me so we can build a relationship. But it’s fake in that just like creating a picture out of puzzle pieces you’re only going to get the frame and not the rest of the pieces that create the whole picture.
If I’m truly honest (and I want to be as much as I can in writing this) there are aspects of my life where I appear authentic, but where struggles and environments still haunt me. Truth be told, I hated it when my wife asked if I’m going to be okay around fireworks this year. Or when I lie to people about why I can’t make it to their 4th of July party. I don’t want to admit that I can’t go see American Sniper because it may send me into a full-blown meltdown. Instead I just “haven’t got around to seeing it.” I don’t want to talk about the fact that I still struggle with my body image. Instead, that was something I used to struggle with and now I just like to “live healthy.”
I can wrap a sentence around bullshit and get other people to eat it up. And you probably can too. But am I the villain for feeding you half-truths and a façade? Or are you just a sucker because you took it at face value?
DIG
My wife and I have this joke about her Facebook status updates. For a while, she would see fascinating articles posted on her friend’s timelines and share it on her wall. It turned out about half of them were fake so I quickly became a BS radar by consistently posting snopes.com articles on the comments section of her statuses.
These days she’s a lot more careful about what she chooses to believe, let alone post. So now when she tells me something that doesn’t jive I’ll often tease her by asking, “Oh, did you read that on Facebook?” (to which she usually slaps my shoulder)
Friendships and community are oddly similar these days. We don’t want to dig to uncover the full truth because what we might uncover is uncomfortable or falls in the realm of fake authenticity (or simply something we want to hear) when there’s more to the story. Instead, we get comfortable and have surface level friendships that aren’t even really friendships. They’re more of mutually beneficial acquaintances for the goal of keeping up appearances. In one of the most startling revelations I had recently, a guy I considered one of my closest friends told me, “Are we really that close? You don’t even know my favorite color and I don’t know your favorite band.” That may seem trivial to you, but if you spend time getting to know a whole person, most areas of their life aren’t left unturned. That evening we ended up talking about our favorite movies, comic books, and some hard situations we were currently battling. Since then, there’s been a much deeper and legitimate bond between the two of us.
But it took him saying, “You don’t even know my favorite color.”
I believe the reason we don’t have real community is because we’re comfortable having enough people in our lives that make us appear like we’re not hurting for friends or actually lonely. We have a thousand Facebook friends or Instagram followers, but not a single person that would help us move or drive us to the airport. We delude ourselves into thinking that quantity somehow trumps the quality of a relationship. And that’s because we don’t want to dig. Digging is work and work equals exercise and let’s be honest….that’s exhausting. But deep down we know something is off and so we keep seeking community and new friendships like it’s the Lost City of Atlantis. We keep hearing about it from other people who’ve experienced it, but we’re convinced it no longer exists and is the thing of myths. The finger pointing then begins — It’s our “friends.” A club, the church, or an organization’s fault. Perhaps it’s society and what they’re teaching us.
Maybe what we need is just a shovel and to roll up our sleeves.
I’m starting to make it a point to bring my shovel into the relationships I want to develop.
I might find some dead or rotting surprises in my search. But if I dig deep enough, I know I’ll always find treasure.
