Community Is ...

By Christina Johnson
Creativity + Social Change
University of Connecticut

Community as friendship ...
Community as belonging ...
Community as unity ...
Community as home ...
Community as work ...
Community as religion ...
Community as education ...
Community as choice ...

When I see the word "community," two other words come to mind -- common and unity. Community is anything that unites a group of people, small or large, around a similar or common ground. As a child, community consisted of where and with whom we would ride our bikes in summer or whose doorbell we would ring first when school was cancelled for snow. It was about the people, not the place. Today, community is who I choose to spend time with, where I choose to be and what I choose to do.

Community is the place where you feel most at home and the people you feel most at home with. It doesn’t stop at the borders of a town. In fact, it’s borderless. The word "community" doesn’t represent a place, but the feeling of belonging. It’s knowing that you are where you want to be, where you choose to be and with the people who also choose to be there. That’s what unites us all -- common ground, common needs, common desires, likes and dislikes. This common ground can bring a group of people together and also push them very far apart.

There is no definition of what or who community should include. I have certainly learned that my family community, the people I know by blood relation, is probably a group of people I would not necessarily choose to know in my life. This is not to say I don’t love or connect with them, but if we did not have that common ground of family relation, we really wouldn’t have much else in common. Our interests lie in other places, but yet we stay bonded because we all came from the same starting point together and that’s what keeps us united. My friends are the people I have chosen to surround myself with, they are a different kind of community to me. They are the people who share my interests, needs and wants and we come together over those things.  Our class is a community, had we not all had a common need for this class, whether that need was fulfilling a requirement for graduation or a desire to push yourself past the point that you were at when we started, we most likely wouldn’t find ourselves sitting together once a week having vibrant discussions.

This idea of community gives us all the satisfaction of belonging. When we meet another person or group of people who share our needs and interests we realize that we are not alone in this world and that is a very necessary, very pleasant feeling. Our society can be a very cold place. It can be a battle to get through the mundane work days or to get through a crisis of some sort, which we will all experience at one point or another. Having a group of like-minded people who support you and care about your well being can give you the strength to get through the ugly points in life. Life in general is not easy, many times it’s not at all fun, but having people to lean on or give you a friendly gesture makes it so much brighter. Without that we would all be floating along doing what we must and then we would die. Life without community is not what I would call a fulfilled life at all.

Knowing what we have learned so far about community, as well as all we still have to learn, it’s important that we take this information and use it to our advantage. There is no excuse for not making the most of what we have. Even when we have very little, having people to share it with changes your perspective. Although I believe many have adopted this idea of community, many are not enough. All of us need to adopt the idea that we are not alone, we are responsible for each other and we have others around us who know exactly how we feel and exactly what we need and want. Social networking is an excellent example of taking advantage of community. It allows us to expand our communities across the world. It allows us to reach someone who could be lost without that simple connection to another who understands them.

I once heard a bereavement counselor explain that it only takes one person to make a huge impact in someone’s life. Everything in our lives and in our society is done on such a grand, oversized scale these days that it is easy to slip into the mindset that we are helpless to what is happening around us and around the world. It’s easy to give up and forget that we have the ability to change anything around us if we want to and I can guarantee that if you want it changed someone else does, too. If we all very simply step outside of that and look at the small ways we can make an impact, it will inspire social change. This activity reminded me of the phrase, “the personal is political.” It took me a very long time to understand what that means, but I now understand that if you want to stop world hunger, you have to feed someone. That goes right to the heart of what community is and what it can do. You don’t need to sell your home and donate the money; you just need to share what you can within your community and watch a real change take place.