Narcissus Comes To Co-Housing
For a dozen years, I lived in one of the country’s primo co-housing communities. We were featured in national publications. Located in a semi-rural, university town with easy access to the conveniences of metropolitan life, the community offered the benefits of close-knit living free of the drawbacks often associated with communes.
To put it bluntly, we were the bees knees.
When it came time to sell my unit, the members on the community’s waiting list had first dibs. These were individuals and families familiar with the lifestyle and layout of the community, who’d joined in its activities, embraced its values and were eager to become permanent residents. If no one on the waiting list purchased a unit that was put up for sale, the bids would go out to others to whom the co-housing lifestyle appealed.
One by one, potential buyers came to see the unit which was attractive and in good shape. Surprisingly, there were no offers. Even when the bids went out to the world at large, there were no offers. I dropped the price. Still no offers. Yet prospective buyers declared, sincerely, that they wanted to live in a cooperative community.
What was the hitch?
As it happened, the unit was carpeted. I began to hear a common refrain. “No hard wood floors.”
“You could rip up the carpeting and expose the floorboards,” I said.
But under the carpeting were narrow slat floorboards not the wide, barn-type floorboards favored by prospective buyers.
Here were folks, some who’d come from significant distances and had waited months, some of them years, to join a community of their dreams: life in a lovely place with like-minded souls, community gardens, communal dining, safe play spaces for the kids, fun things to do, handy child care arrangements for single moms and dads as many of the moms and dads were single, all at reasonable costs. Employment wasn’t an issue as most prospective buyers either had the kind of work that could be done anywhere with a decent wi-fi connection or who’d come equipped with means of their own and didn’t need to work for a living.
But lacking hard wood floors, their dreams of life in community would have to wait additional months, possibly years, before a suitable unit might come on the market.
I gave these folks credit. They wanted what they wanted, and 99% of what they wanted wasn’t going to cut it. The delights of living in a community that offered a lifestyle that deeply attracted them was insufficient to compensate for the lack of hard wood floors.
“We’ll wait for another unit. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
I think of those hard wood floors — that is, the lack of them — when I contemplate many of the single women (and some of the single men) of my Boomer generation who, though it may be impolitic to say so, haven’t got all the time in the world.
Women pined for Narcissus. Some of them, unable to bear the pain of unrequited love, did themselves in. One of those who did herself in was Echo, the lovely forest nymph. Following Echo’s demise, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, had had it with Narcissus. She enticed him onto the bank of a stream where Narcissus beheld his reflection in the current and ended up wasting away, pining for his reflection that he could never hope to embrace.
The ideal, in the culture of narcissism, is to be able to say, “I’m open to a relationship if the right one comes along, but I don’t need a relationship to be whole and complete in myself.”
You can never be hurt, betrayed or played for a fool.
Put it this way:
“If I were to have a partner and if he/she should one day be confined to a wheelchair after an accident or due to a debilitating disease, I’d do all the errands and chores, earn all the money it would take to keep us afloat and not do many of the things I’d like to do while I put up with his/her lousy moods given that it’s not much fun to live life confined to a wheelchair and to be in constant pain.”
Would you sign on to a partnership like that and honor it at the cost of your life?
You’d have to love someone to do that.
You’d have to have freed yourself from the bondage of narcissism.
We could do with re-education camps, the kind you hear about in scary countries, but voluntary: places we could go to get de- and re-programmed, centers where singles who want partners can be assigned them.
Meanwhile, we can alter the myth. Instead of doing herself in, Echo sidles up to Narcissus, shoots him a wink and, in Janis Joplin’s gravely voice, goes, “Try. Just a little bit harder…”
Having been de-toxed and gobsmacked by the loveliest vision he’s ever seen, Narcissus doesn’t have to try. He’s on board and ready to roll.
Do Echo and Narcissus live happily ever after with nary a knot or knurl in their hardwood floors?
I think we know the answer to that.
