Everyone won't shut up about community
The boundaries generation are growing up and now realise we do need a little bit of help, actually.
This week I read an article (okay, a substack) titled ‘you’re a bitch, and that’s why we lack community’. The high level takeaway is that we’re all bitches when we cancel plans, set hard boundaries, and say no - the pendulum towards self-care has swung too far and we’ve all become complete loners and shit friends. It’s doing the rounds in group chats and has been liked nearly 5000 times, so it’s safe to say the sentiment somewhat resonated.
Over on TikTok self-help videos are echoing the communitarian rally cry, reminding people that to benefit from community they must be part of a community. Or as they say over there, ‘to have a friend is to be a friend’. It’s the same conversation, albeit packaged a little differently. I can see my grandmother raising an eyebrow. Duh?
So why are we all suddenly so obsessed with community?
Over the past decade, there has been an uptake in books about both friendship and boundaries. The rally cry? SAY NO! Be savage. Dump your best mate. Set your boundaries. Protect your peace. Fuck ‘em. I was studying my undergraduate degree at university when I first heard about this sentiment, and remember feeling deeply uncomfortable. As someone who spent the better part of my life living away from my family and relied almost entirely on my friendships for emotional sustenance, it was a self-help tangent that scared me. Could all my friends dump me?
Enter 2020 and we were forced into domestic isolation. For those who hadn’t already dumped their community in favour of self-care, now the conditions were ripe. Why FaceTime a friend when you can just ignore the call and order takeaway? Why go for a stroll when you can have a scroll? We collectively fell into bad habits, letting community fall to the wayside in favour of “me time”. And now we are paying the price.
The boundaries generation are growing up and realise we do need a little bit of help, actually. Someone to watch the kids. Someone to drop us at the airport. Someone to hold our hand during the chemo.
Don’t get me wrong - boundaries are important. We’ve all encountered a bully or a narcissist who we’ve had to set very firm boundaries with - at work or in our personal lives. I’m not talking about these delicate situations, which can be devastating and an emotional minefield to navigate. Let me be clear, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the slow degradation of the micro-interactions that create the fabric of community. Obviously.
Community is a blanket laid beneath us that we only realise is holding us up when we’re about to fall. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 28 I fell head first into my blanket. My community held me and let me know that they were there - when and if I needed them. Friends, both new and old, family, friends of the family, members of the country town I grew up in, old bosses, the lot. Food was dropped over. Flowers were delivered. And a different friend came with me to every single chemotherapy appointment. Thank god I didn’t yeet out my friends back in 2017.
A sense of community is not a nice to have, it’s a necessity. Maslow even put it in his hierarchy of needs! So chat to the barista. Offer to take the neighbour’s bin out. Go to the coffee date you organised. Call an old friend. Interaction by interaction, the fabric of your community will be woven again. And please please please… take those books on boundaries to the op shop.