COMMUNITY
No Community is Perfect
By Sunday, we were without heating and hot water for over 24 hours. We made a rookie mistake and let our propane gas canisters run out Saturday morning. The service indicator was red and the bottles rocked easily when you shook them, but neither of us thought to check. My partner and I moved to this village less than 2 months ago and never before lived in a place that relied on bottled gas.
First, we called the mobile number stuck to the front of the boiler. A friendly Cornish man answered, who correctly deduced that the gas had run out and that’s why the boiler he previously serviced was no longer working. We messaged my good friend’s mom, who lives in another small village about a half-hour away. She offered up her neighbor’s electric radiator. After about a dozen calls, my partner managed to find a family-owned business that would trade one of our empty canisters for a full one on a Saturday afternoon. The neighbor across the street lent us a wrench to attach the new bottle to the hose.
When the boiler wouldn’t start up again, we posted the question on the village community forum. Within an hour, half a dozen neighbors offered helpful suggestions for how to troubleshoot the issue. The village pub owner offered to bring the only plumber in the village over on Monday evening. Our landlord’s mom even stopped by to check in on us. This was the same woman who made scones for us the day we arrived and clearly labeled what order to add the jam and clotted cream. On this side of the river, jam goes on first. Clotted cream second.
Community is often revealed in these small gestures.
My parents were both New Yorkers and only children. Growing up, there were no cousins, aunts, or uncles around. My dad’s parents died young, so my brother and I only ever knew one set of grandparents. Grandma and grandpa lived several states away, so we saw them maybe once or twice a year. My mom and dad moved to a fairly rural part of the state just before having us. Mom said that if she called for help she’d get a woodchuck, not a neighbor. My dad passed away when I was 6. After that, it was basically just the 3 of us. Apparently, both dad and grandpa were famous for saying,
“you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends”.
My mom took this to heart.
Growing up, we were friends with three families: The Kosters, The Millers, and The Simons. All were within driving distance and had kids the same age as my brother and me. I’m sure that there are countless times that my mom relied on them, though most of this support was invisible to us. In school, I didn’t have one tight-knit group of friends that I always hung out with. I had a handful of very close friends, each of whom was part of a different social group. It was great for trying on different identities and ways of being. It was bad for filling up my Friday nights.
Since then, I’ve always lived in cities: Atlanta, Boston, Hong Kong, London. My small family was at least a plane ride away. Neighbors were almost always anonymous. I distinctly remember the real estate agent for my apartment in Hong Kong. After showing me the place, he said that there was one more thing he had to tell me before I decided. He then sheepishly revealed that he lived across the hall. He was worried that might be a dealbreaker.
Last year I interviewed Amar Dhand, who studies the impact of peoples’ networks on their physical health. I was struck by the way he described his own personal network,
“I have a very good weak tie network, in which I have all these people in different parts of the world, different walks of life, that stimulate me and provide wonderful experiences…but when I need childcare support, it’s very hard for me to tap on any of them. They’re just not available.”
As an adult, I have also cultivated intellectually-stimulating connections with people all over the world. I built my personal network to be an information and idea gathering machine, where I connected infrequently with many people who didn’t know each other. Each would introduce me to something new and provide a unique perspective. It was invaluable for my career and personal growth, but less helpful for my habit of locking myself out.
The researcher Janice McCabe says this type of network looks like a daisy, where most of the people you know don’t know each other. The opposite looks like a ball of yarn, where everyone knows everyone else. Balls of yarn can be very resilient but sometimes act like echo chambers. Daisy-shaped networks avoid groupthink but often don’t provide the same level of support.
Turns out it’s not only who we know, it’s who they know.
Since last March, my partner and I have engaged more with our local community. I baked treats and distributed them to our neighbors. My partner helped jumpstart one neighbor’s car after months without use. We gave regular refuge to another neighbor’s cat, who struggled to come to terms with the new puppy at home. We helped our locked-out neighbors get back into their apartment on several occasions.
We also received unexpected goodies in our mailbox. We borrowed canned tomatoes from our next-door neighbors for a last-minute chili dinner, milk from the couple downstairs to test out an eggnog recipe, and a banana from upstairs when we craved a smoothie.
Turns out that we rely on these connections even when the support looks less tangible. Mario Small describes this phenomenon in his book Someone To Talk To. When he asked people from whom they seek advice or a sounding board, they named their strongest relationships like their mother, partner, or best friend. When he asked people who they confided in the last time they dealt with an important matter, more than half of the names they mentioned were not part of their original list. Instead, they offered up people like a colleague, their hairdresser, or someone they met online. Turns out that close relationships are complex and often filled with expectation. Instead, people frequently turn to weaker connections in their network for advice and support.
There’s no such thing as a perfect community. We are always balancing tradeoffs between size, interconnectedness, and diversity. Small communities are easier to manage, but sometimes you don’t have enough helping hands. Large communities can harness lots of resources, but they can also feel impersonal. Tight-knit communities can make you feel safe and secure, but they can also reinforce bad habits. If there aren’t enough connections among members of a community, they might not feel like a community at all. Diversity is so valuable for providing different perspectives, but it would be very challenging to be part of a community where every member spoke a different language. Who doesn’t enjoy a pop culture reference that gets a knowing smirk?
Sunday evening we took two glorious hot showers and warmed the place up to a comfortable room temperature. Seems that our system needs two canisters with gas to work, one just won’t cut it. The pub owner never brought the plumber by on Monday, he already heard that our gas was working again ;).
© Erica Young 2021
