Good morning,
I haven’t sent a series of emails for a while, so this begins a reflection on the importance of community in our lives, and its relationship to finding individual freedom and fulfillment. There is often a perceived tension between these things: fulfilling oneself individually versus being part of a community. Many people today long for a sense of community but fear the loss of individual freedom and autonomy. In recognition of this tension, these emails will consider our individual journeys, what fulfillment is, and how we might find it – alongside a consideration of the role of community, and how its gifts can be encouraged and supported in the modern world.
We humans are social, communal beings. We are born into a group, enculturated by a group, and begin our lives by looking to others to understand who we are, what the world is like, and what our lives are about. Each individual is radically shaped and formed by some group of others. A major example is that we acquire a specific language from our early group, which shapes how we think and how we understand ourselves. Another is that our thinking process itself, from its very beginning, is embedded in specific stories, understandings, beliefs, and myths given to us by our group. Still another is that how we come to understand and express our emotions starts with messages we receive from others about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate to say, to do, and even to feel.
These messages are often provided through example by the people around us, rather than by words, and are often conveyed and received at a fairly unconscious level. Subtly but powerfully, some emotions and ways of expressing them are encouraged while others are discouraged in a framework developed by many generations of those who gave rise to the group into which we started life in this world. And venturing beyond even these factors, many wise teachers have said that our relationship to others, and the love, connection, communion, and compassion we share with others is central to a fulfilling life.
Given all this, it is little wonder that, throughout our lives, part of us feels a longing for connection to others, to be part of a family, group, tribe, or community – for deep connections beyond the confines of our small, ego selves. Part of us longs to be part of something greater than our small self. Simultaneously, especially in the cultures of modernity, we as individuals are encouraged to “be all you can be,” “do your own thing,” “follow your bliss,” “be who you are,” and “find your answers for yourself.” We are encouraged to recognize and pursue the natural drive for individuality, independence, autonomy, personal liberation and freedom, self-development, self-fulfillment, self-determination, and personal agency and sovereignty. Consider these messages:
Ethan Embry: You have to do your own thing, no matter what anyone says. It’s your life.
Rudyard Kipling: The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you do that, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Martha Beck: Your individuality is the most valuable thing you have.
Robert Orben: Individuality is the key to success.
Harvey Fierstein: Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.
Remy de Gourmont: Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.
Oscar Wilde: My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
At the same time, we are inherently social, communal creatures. There is a need for community in all of us. Most people throughout history lived in tribes or small groups – that is our natural state. Most of us implicitly understand the importance of commitment to and relationship with other beings, of community and its responsibilities, the necessity of cooperation and even sacrifice for the common good, society’s need for a certain amount of conformity to prevent chaos and to create order amid the conflicting urges of many individuals, the personal and communal value of loyalty to others and/or a cause, and even the spiritual value of communion with others to get beyond our small, ego-based identities. Many wise people have spoken to this:
John Donne: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
T.S. Eliot: What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community,
Ralph Waldo Emerson: The whole creation is made of hooks and eyes, of bitumen, of sticking – plaster, and whether your community is made in Jerusalem or in California, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres in a perfect ball. Men as naturally make a state, or a church – as caterpillars a web.
Cicero: We were born to unite with our fellow beings, and to join in community with the human race.
Herman Melville: We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Georges Duhamel: Always seek communion. It is the most precious thing you possess. Where there is communion there is something that is more than human, there is surely something divine.
So, we have been wrestling with the question of how much to focus on ourselves versus our commitment to and responsibility toward others for a very long time. What, then, is the right balance between individuality and community for each of us? How do we find that balance? This will be the theme of the emails over the next few weeks.
Reflection: Focus for a moment on first one, then the other of these currents in you, feel the pull of each – how they have affected you, and are affecting you still in your life.
Be well,
David