The following is the 12th part of a 12 part series based on the book 12 Tiny Things: Simple Ways to Live a More Intentional Life. We’re focusing on the 12 themes outlined in the book: Space, Work, Spirituality, Food, Style, Home, Sensuality, Nature, Creativity, Communication, Learning, and Community. Most offerings include either a new reflection or early draft /deleted scene from the book along with a worksheet and/or an audio component to help you delve more fully into the theme in your own life.
The following is the very first draft of the final chapter in 12 Tiny Things. A lot of it you’ll find, in slightly edited form, in the book, and parts of it got cut to add other stories. At this point in history, with war and violence and scarcity and AI everywhere, realigning with true community and what that means for each of us seems like a good idea. So, here’s the final installment of the 12 Tiny Things series.
“Are we human beings who are in community, do we call to each other? Do we heed each other? Do we want to know each other?” ~Elizabeth Alexander
One mid summer day when my child (now 13!) was four months old, a woman pulled into our driveway and introduced herself to my husband who happened to be standing by the mailbox. She said she was new to the area, and she and her family had just moved up from Minneapolis. They had a 2 year old, and a 4 month old like us. The two of them chatted for a few minutes, and she said she looked forward to seeing us around. After that exchange, we didn’t actually see her around, but I did notice some activity at the house (just down the road from ours) that they had purchased. So a few months later, I packed up some early fall veggies in a basket and headed the half mile down our shared dusty road to say hello and properly welcome them into the neighborhood.
I knocked on the front door and after a while a man answered, covered head to foot in sawdust, wearing a tool belt. When he invited me to step inside, it was clear that this was no small remodeling job: the inside of the house was completely gutted. Aisha, the woman who’d introduced herself those months ago, was staying with some family in the city with their two young children while Mike, her spouse, worked on getting the house livable. I handed him the basket, said good luck, offered my own spouse’s assistance should he need it, and headed back home.
We didn’t see either of them again until the following spring. I figured it was just another one of those failed attempts to make friends as an adult – turns out it’s a lot harder to do those things in a rural neighborhood than in a college town when you have your very own dorm room and built-in community of roommates.
But then one day several months later, Aisha showed up again in the driveway and invited me over. I took my 15 month old along and she played alongside Aisha’s 16 month old on the floor while we wrapped our hands around cups of Somali chai. I learned of her struggles with raising two young kids on top of being in graduate school, how much she wanted to have a thriving garden, and how challenging it has been to figure out how to build community in America. Growing up on another continent followed by time in a refugee camp and then several years in Europe, she knows what it can be like to live in close community– the kind where one’s survival depends on one’s neighbors– and our rural area doesn’t always make it easy to cultivate the way of being that feels right. Somehow despite our obvious differences, we were each able to tell our own stories in a way that kept me going over for tea. We didn’t always laugh a lot and some of our conversations were downright depressing as we discussed the state of the world. But that summer we planted potatoes at my house and then weeded asparagus at hers, shared challenges and offered aid, and gave living in a way that felt right a fair shot. We each asked for help and we gave our own when it was needed.
The culture in which I operate (in the United States) is one that is largely defined by a fear of scarcity and the pursuit of happiness. The scarcity lens manifests in countless ways: From not having the money we need to live our chosen lifestyle to existing in the shadow of low self-esteem to looking to external circumstances to make us happy to feeling devoid of authentic relationships; the list could go on for pages. It’s hard to feel good when we live under a fear of lack, and it’s hard to interact with others and foster a sense of community when scarcity is providing our base.
And happiness? The pursuit of it has taken on a life of its own in recent history. Never before have so many millions of dollars been spent on things like meditation, yoga, self-help books and personal development courses, all designed to help one find happiness. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with meditation, yoga, self help, or personal development– all of these things have the potential to add value to life.1 The trouble comes in when we take the “happiness must come from within” sentiment so far that we forget that living in community is just as important for true wellbeing. We can’t count on other people to make us happy, no. But we do need other people if we are going to invite the living conditions that allow us to thrive.
Consider the saying “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Meaning; Make it work by working hard. Do whatever it takes to make it in a difficult world in a way that matters. Go it alone and make your own path. Happiness is an inside job. Happiness is a choice. Work hard and the world is your oyster. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Some of these are fine tips and have a ring of truth about them. When the path is going somewhere that doesn’t fit with what you value, it’s sound advice to try going another way. Working hard makes a lot of sense if you are working at a sustainable pace toward something that makes your soul sing. Similarly, learning how to accept a crappy situation and breathe through life’s hardships is an essential skill to develop. However, when I imagine pulling myself up by my own bootstraps, I see that it just isn’t going to work.
I have boots. They are pretty nice ones, when compared to the variation of boots in the world. It’s worth saying that some people don’t have boots at all, or their boots don’t fit, or they are missing one, or the soles have worn off. So when I, or anybody else, starts pulling on the straps of our own boots that we may or may not have, it might be possible to get one foot a ways off the ground, but that eventually just leads to some awkward, uncomfortable hopping around on one leg. And eventually falling over.
One summer we went on a family vacation to the upper peninsula of Michigan. It was a fabulous week away from the usual routine, full of beach days, crystal clear waters that stretched into an endless horizon, and lazy days reading on the deck. I asked Aisha to look in on our cats now and then while we were gone– not too big an ask really, since cats are pretty self sufficient. We gave her instructions to give them fresh water a few times and showed her where the food is kept, and that was that. On Tuesday, three days into our time away, I got a text from Aisha just checking in, and she mentioned that the cats were fine and it was pouring rain so hopefully we were having good weather where we were. And we were...it was beautifully sunny. However, the fact that it was pouring rain at home was cause for concern, as our basement– when it rains really really hard– is prone to flooding. Usually it’s not a big deal because we are home and can just run the manual pump and keep it dry.2 But we weren’t home. There was no one to run the pump. We started to resign ourselves to coming home to a soiled and moldy basement because it felt like an imposition to ask someone to go over and pump out our basement. After another hour of worrying, I sent a text mentioning our flooding issue and asked if she’d check it out next time she had a chance to go over there.
On Wednesday morning I woke up to another text. Turns out when Aisha learned of our flooding issue, she went over as soon as she could and manned the pump herself. The water had already started to creep into the living space, so Mike went over, too, with his shop vac and hosed it up. What could have been a huge, expensive disaster ended in an act of kindness from a neighbor. And when we pulled up to the house upon our return home at the end of the week, they showed up about a half hour later with a homegrown roast chicken, potatoes and two side dishes just out of the oven. They wanted to make sure we had something decent to eat after all day in the car and a week away.
We weren’t made to exist as a bunch of bootstrap pulling individuals on a quest to personal happiness. We were made to exist in community. To come to each other’s aid, solicited or not. To see past the fear of not having enough for ourselves to give a little bit to someone else. To find happiness within but also allow other people to provide some of the foundation.
There are challenges when it comes to living in community: people are often too busy to look up from their own problems, neighbors often don’t see eye to eye, and scarcity thinking overpowers kindness more often than I think it should. Every individual is ultimately responsible for their own happiness. But along the way there are lots of opportunities to cultivate community, because there are also lots of opportunities to ask for and accept help. Like when the basement is flooding and my cultural programming says that we’ll just have to pay someone to fix it later. Turns out that can be avoided if you have a few neighbors that have your back and you are willing to ask for help. I can say with confidence that one aspect of my happiness is coming home to a basement that is not flooded.
Dr. Christine Carter of UC Berkeley writes, “The upshot of 50 years of happiness research is that the quantity and quality of a person’s social connections – friendships, relationships with family members, closeness to neighbors, etc. – is so closely related to well-being and personal happiness the two can practically be equated.”3
We need time alone, learning to breathe through uncertainty, but we also need to exist in partnership with others. We exist most successfully in community when we can put ourselves out there and be vulnerable. It doesn’t always go well, of course, no matter who you are. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and ask for help, there is always a risk. Letting others (especially neighbors or other people who live in our communities who might have different views on the big issues of life) see us can feel dangerous, and sometimes people don’t respond how we might want them to when we share a need. But embracing vulnerability allows us to be part of the give and take that defines being in community with the world. As Elizabeth Alexander questions, we need to call to each other, heed each other, and want to know each other. That’s the only way community—and the path toward happiness—can be born.
In fact, I reach these skills to folks in recovery every day. They are very helpful—they just aren’t everything.
Good news on this front, several years later….drain tile is going in this summer, so hopefully summer vacations will be worry free (when it comes to flooding due to rain) in future years.
(Gallup-Healthways Well-being Index, 2012)
"I have boots..." My favorite paragraph! And agreed, community, sometimes hard to find, takes a while (not to mention willingness for vulnerabilty) to establish and shore up. But it's critical. 💜🐧