Community
Author: Eleanor Cowan
Published in QUAAL- Linking for Learning, Concordia University
Vol. 17, No.4, Summer 2000

As a child, community was my big family, my neighborhood of friends up and down what seemed like miles of street, my inspiring kindergarten teacher and the lady serving fresh ice cream at the dairy, far, far away, around the corner. And then change happened. It was a stunning shock to learn that Miss Rosemary was not coming with me to Grade One. Then my best friend moved away. I missed her terribly. Soon after, I found out that our family was moving too.

It hasn’t stopped since then: moves, losses, deaths, births, and additional career shifts. In fact, change itself is a permanent feature in my life. Yet, my sense of community is stable because it is rooted, not in geography, but in ideas.

So what does community mean to me?

Community is neither hand-picked not ‘by invitation only’. Life chooses who is to collect in any sphere and for how long too. Successful community is not about grasping tightly - but holding lightly, especially to conflicting ideas and difficult personalities. I have learned that I have no business judging people yet I am entirely responsible to assess how comfortable – or not – I feel in their midst and to take care of myself in all of that. I’ve heard some wise and helpful things from people I did not like. This is how community helps me to stretch and grow with those whose personalities challenge me to mature.

It means that if there is a disaster in my town or in another part of the world, I don’t have to know my neighbor; it’s about helping out by giving aid, protesting injustice, voicing my thoughts.

It’s about joining groups that, together, create the kind of intelligent, powerful energy that gets important work done. Grandiosity often orchestrates solo. Humility holds hands and actually accomplishes something. Still and all, there are times when no one else will join in and you must write that risky memo all by yourself. Supporting your own instincts, by yourself, is important because your silence is your permission for that which is unacceptable. Trusting yourself is a prerequisite to community.

Community is about bumping into a former student in the metro who thanks me for having been there for her in the past and even though I just vaguely remember her face and couldn't possibly manage a name, I feel that, wherever she goes, I’ve helped raise her in her world family.

Community is about taking a day off when I need quiet time all by myself so that, rested and relaxed, I can respond well rather than react. I can give only of what I’ve got. Community is about people, places and events only secondarily. Primarily, it’s all about the purposeful, generous energy that allows us to share the best of ourselves, wherever we are, with family and friends, old and new.