Community Creation

Community (n) – a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

But is community merely that? People who reside in one place and share a government, culture and history? I’m always curious about how people create community--why certain people connect with some and not others. What kinds of things do you use to determine whether or not you will associate with a group of people and stay away from others? Or do you just flit around to all sorts of groups and therefore don’t really have a strong community of your own?

Maybe the fact that I just up and moved to Cape Town and had to create my own community has made me more aware of these questions, but I’m still curious nonetheless. All of my 8 other roommates had to do the same thing and it’s been interesting watching them create a sense of belonging and support system in a foreign country. Some of them have gone to bars and clubs to seek their friends, others have joined gyms and running clubs, some joined groups on campus and other still have sought community in churches and bible studies.

I know I’ve wrestled with the right balance of foreign to familiar culture. While Cape Town isn’t exactly the back hills of India or the tundra of Russia, there are certainly a plethora of cultures and communities to try and be involved in. People who are like each other will naturally gravitate towards each other because they like the same things, enjoy the same music, taste in food, music, movies etc. There is the township culture, the busy city culture, the hiking culture, the beach/surfing culture, the wine cultivation culture, the coloured culture, the white culture, the northern suburbs, the southern suburbs, the Christian culture, the Muslim culture, the non-religious culture, the community-development culture, the high-and-mighty culture, and the list goes on and on….

But where do I plug in? I want to experience as many different kinds of cultures and communities as possible because I believe there is SO much to be learned from all of them. Leaving your own culture and exploring another one helps you appreciate your own and adds new and exciting things to what you’ve already learned. I know that after a long time of being in a community much different from my own, I need to just come back and find a coffee shop to relax and reflect. I guess that’s where I feel the most at home.

This is an on-going line of thought I’ve been kicking around so I’m sure I’ll blog on it again, but through all of this there is one thing that is certain: We all long for community—we were created to be in community and no matter how far we travel through this earth, every human being longs to be in community and connection with others. The beauty of this fact is that there is an endless possibility of people to connect with. You may already be in good community or may still be seeking for that right mixture of people who you are comfortable with yet push you along to be the best you can be, but either way know that the person next to you needs to be in community just as much as you do. Don't live in isolation--we weren't meant for that. Create community.