11/17/2025
Oh, the search for community.
How can it be that so many people are searching for it and still struggling to find it?
Doesn’t it just take people gathering together and caring for one another?
With all the loneliness in the world, you’d think there’d be an endless number of volunteers eager to help create this elusive “village.”
Or maybe there are endless volunteers, but they’re all just a little too… eh, annoying, needy, sarcastic, nosey, emotional, unfunny, troubled - the list goes on.
So the question becomes: are we willing to be annoyed, irritated, inconvenienced, or even challenged for the sake of community and belonging?
Community requires inconvenience. To have a village, you have to be a villager. These two ideas popped up in my scrolling (I hafta admit) and have stuck with me.
You may not feel 100% like going to the party, but it might mean the world to your friend if you did. You may not always agree or vibe with your neighbor, but looking out for one another brings more safety and peace to and around your home.
Now, I should clarify a couple things so I don’t accidentally encourage the extreme opposite. Abusive or harmful behavior should not get a “pass” or be swept under the rug for the sake of the collective. That only harms victims further. If someone is hurting someone else, that person has every right in the world to create space and set boundaries.
My question is more along the lines of whether we’ve become too quick to create distance from any annoyance in our lives - whether that annoyance comes from wanting to hide in bed streaming Netflix/Hulu all weekend, or from not wanting to engage with people who don’t behave, communicate, or think exactly like we do.
