Community is defined differently depending on our place of origin. Back in Colorado, years ago, when it was still relatively possible to entertain the idea of purchasing land in the valley where I came of age, some friends and I shared dreams of building a community together. We were inspired by the villages we had spent time in throughout our travels through places like India, Nepal and incidentally, the place I now call home, Thailand. The shared struggles of village life seemed the antidote to the loneliness of the so-called “civilized” world. We noticed in these places how everything was shared, the farm chores, the tools for the farming, the harvesting, the child rearing, the cooking, etc. Oftentimes there was only one large kitchen for an entire village, everyone taking turns to cook once or twice a week to allow everyone more time to play with the children, to tend to the gardens, to weave baskets, play music, take naps, etc. Why should everyone be expected to cook every meal for themselves, raise their own children alone, own their own set of garden tools, kitchen appliances, trucks, tractors, etc. when such useful devices could easily be shared?
We wanted to recreate this. We wanted to grow a community where the line between work and play was blurred. We wanted to raise children in such a way that outsiders would find it difficult to determine which children belonged to whom. We wanted to make our own songs and weld our own tools, share them, honor them and not merely throw them away or display them awkwardly in massive, lonely, air-conditioned “mancaves” with thousands of other tools that rarely saw the light of day, which was (and still is) so common in affluent nations.
But what we learned was that the general understanding of “community”, as defined in places where people were raised in isolation, spending their infancy in solitude in cell-like cribs in rooms separated from one’s parents, then spending childhood in classrooms far from family, only to return home to a bugless, heavily filtered, oftentimes security-thick homes that made it clear one was no longer outside and fearful of outsiders, where ones neighbor was only glimpsed occasionally from behind the curtains as they drove up their heated driveway into their unused, tool-filled garage, well, in these places, the enlightened view of “community” was one of living in a place where you could walk to the co-op, see like minded friends at the hot yoga class and maybe meet up once in a while for a craft beer. But to share a kitchen with all these people, regularly?? To spend each meal with the same people you worked in the fields (or office) with that morning? To show up day after day, vulnerable, unkept, exposed to all regardless of feeling happy, sad, beautiful, ugly, tired, etc.? For most, the idea was simply too much.
There is an increasing interest worldwide in returning to community. The isolating trauma inflicted on us all during the COVID pandemic made the need for interactions with others evident. Similar to places like Paris, where one can walk out one’s door and within a fifteen-minute walk in any direction find all of life’s necessities, this model of city planning is gaining in popularity in places like The United States. Yet I wonder, if we still maintain our carefully filtered lives, being able to exit as we please, far from the murky waters of authentic spontaneous engagements such as communally raising unpredictable children, not when it’s convenient but when we are exhausted and receiving no pay for such an effort, will such city planning offer any more authentic community than the Amazon ordering, hyper individualistic bubbles most find themselves living within today?
Most western foreigners (farang as they are lovingly referred to in Thailand) visiting us here at Pun Pun Farm find our way of living a bit overwhelming at first. Initially they are drawn to exploring our chosen lifestyle due to a recognition of something essential missing from their lives, be it a closeness to nature, a since of community, a life rich with meaning, etc. Yet once they are no longer merely waxing poetic about eutopic visions of life within an eco-village and are suddenly thrust deep into the chaos of genuine village culture they are met with the hard-to-swallow pill that many of the things they believed rightly to be the root cause of their cultures anxieties, the very things they came here to shed, were things they had become very much accustomed, even addicted to.
To live in real community means showing up when we don’t want to. It means allowing others to enter our unkept home when it’s inconvenient. Community requires us to share with others and learn how to, in turn, ask others for help when we need it. Community means being exposed. It means growing the capacity to allow others to truly see us, not only when we feel strong but when we feel weak, and not only when the designated space has been provided for us to share in a “safe space”, but all the time, while cooking for the tribe, washing dishes beside a community member you find irritable, while desperately trying to find a moment of quite when generally speaking, there is none.
Modernity has convinced us that we need big fancy homes where no bugs can get in, where no people will annoy us and we can store all our things and keep them shiny and protected from all the messiness of the world outside, the world we so desperately want to be a part of but ironically can’t fully join because our noise cancelling headphones are too big, our walls too tall and insulated, our “need for space” far too great. In order to have community, more is required than proximity to the health food co-op. A willingness to allow others to sit by our fires is expected from us. We must break bread with others regularly, offer our services to friends, strangers and even seeming enemies, without requiring payment, not only when it’s convenient but when we are tired, when we would rather “Netflix and chill”. Community is birthed when we stop placing ourselves and our conditioned comforts in the center of the hearth and allow others’ needs to be as important, if not more so, than our own.
I have not shed all the awkward privileges of my westernized self. To be sure, more than any of the other struggles of life in an eco-village, for me, has been the need to let go of my need for personal space. This “need for space” is a curious privilege that those in affluent societies have become so accustomed to that they speak of it as if it is utterly essential for one’s well-being, even going so far as to claim that to not place one’s own personal needs and time above all else is to forfeit a life of health. Yet having lived in places like India, where oftentimes ten or more people live crammed into one room, I have learned that this view is simply untrue. Indeed, the healthiest, most spiritually liberated people I have met have virtually no physical space for “personal reflection”. They find that space and time within their own mind, as they nobly go about their days in service to the community that in turn, tends to them. The need for the mansion on the hill, whether it is a huge house like the ones owned by Trump or Beyonce or Obama, etc. or the college students smaller but equally king-like private room in a well-insulated apartment in Kansas is essentially the same thing; an effort to avoid truly merging our messy lives with the equally uncertain lives of others around us. And it seems to be an inherited practice passed down to us from the same colonizing forces those of us in progressive “communities” claim to oppose.
I’m not suggesting we all need to live in mud homes and share one kitchen per village and all grow our own food. (Well, on second thought, I am actually! I do kinda think we should do that! Ha!) But I am not so arrogant and naive as to think that my view is the only one that will counter our highly resource intense modern lifestyles that physically prevent us from ever realizing what it truly means to commune with others. I’m am pretty convinced however that humans have the creative capacity to build better villages than the hyper individualistic ones that now dominate the world that educate us into thinking we all “need space”.
We don’t need space. We ARE space. But I’ll save that little bubble of meandering thought for another time. May you and yours be well fed. May your enemies be well fed too. May you dine together and speak of peace.
I cannot imagine a worst life... :)
🥰 lovely!