I’m working on a Barbenheimer piece that will end up in your inboxes in the next few days, because I wanted my thoughts to marinate more than 24 hours. But that gives me the chance to ask a question I’m thinking about a lot as I put together the beginnings of my next book. The question has two parts:
Jul 23, 2023·edited Jul 23, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
My existing community is great, a wonderful mix of in-person and remote friends, so I don't want to write about that. I am going to write about the community I wish existed instead ... and what I wish is, the men would show up. Frequently would be nice, I'd settle for occasionally, but as it is, I see men partcipating in community pretty much not at all.
Not because I miss men, not because we need them either. But because they are half of the population with the most money and resources, and I wish they would do even the barest minimum in participating in this basic element of humaning.
I am deeply craving and hoping for community that is spontaneous and supportive. Lockdown has taught me how much seeing people in person means to me, so I’m trying to figure out how to make that happen more often (whether that’s connecting more deeply with my neighbors or taking more trips to see faraway friends). I find myself longing for a life where friends drop in for dinner, or stop by on their way home from work for a hug and to share a quick bit of news. I want intergenerational relationships. I want a frequency and a casualness of contact that leads to real intimacy and vulnerability, in the hopes that at some point it would become something that can exist and move forward without me having to take every step myself.
I don’t really consider my family to be my community. Community is so important to me, and I have little in common with my family in terms of values, including the value of community. So that’s out. Friends are very important. Strangely, I talk to a lot of strangers both for my job and because I bike and take public transit (in a city where that’s not a predominant mode) and I consider most other people doing the same to be my community. I’ve been cared for and have learned a lot and helped others just by sitting at a bus shelter or talking with a few kids when I’m on the bike. I was raised in a very not-social upper middle class white family, and moving to a city that is not majority white has been so important in my development of the concept of community. What I’m missing? Family, yes. Neighbors. I live in a racially segregated city and as a white person....I think a lot of white (middle/upper class) people aren’t great at building the community I value. Not just planned events and block parties, but spontaneous conversations and asking for help from strangers. I got mugged and the people who made me feel safe were not the cops but the multiple strangers who checked on me and gave me their numbers of I needed help, which was a short insight that such a thing is possible.
I’m missing, though, a revolutionary community of others who are educated and interested in fighting the property-obsessed way of being. I am missing a community of other organizers. They exist, but finding them in white spaces (again, segregation) is difficult and I sometimes feel alone, especially when the people who I most connect with have kids, so I have such limited time with them. I have been thinking about how to find them on the internet (NOT social media).
It’s a good question and forgive my meandering answer or any sweeping generalizations. It’s the question I think about all the time.
I recently was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My community is my friends and family in real time...but I found a support group online that helped me immensely.
Everyone pulled together and made sure I was clean and comfortable. But the online community was I able to cry and laugh and vent. I went through surgery and lo and behold the tumor was benign! I have no complaints of the community in which I am involved in, we pulled together.
There are 2 pieces of community that are missing for me, and their absence relates (I think) to living in a high income, career driven, upper middle class community. First - friends who we can see regularly, spontaneously. It seems like everyone here is SO BUSY. They have work stuff, and kids have lots of enrichment activities after school and anytime we get together it needs to be planned weeks in advance, which then feels like a work update meeting. I have tried to organize a get together at the same time each week so people could stop by if they were available and there was so much enthusiasm about the idea but most didn’t make it. I am so thankful to the family that came consistently. I walk my kids around the neighborhood and most people are not playing outside -- people just stick to themselves.
The other is brown and black folks. I joke that sometimes I want to stick a sign on my chest saying I am looking for brown mom friends. We are a racially mixed family (I’m a person of color, partner isn’t) and I crave the shorthand that could come from being friends with other people that have the shared experience living in this largely white area.
If anyone has suggestions to help either of these I’m all ears
In the past couple years I've worked really hard to build community around where I live. I have two young kids so "going places" is super hard and un-fun for me. We've had success bringing people close--we basically built a family compound, and now my mom and my son's early childhood nanny both live next door, and the kids can run over to their houses whenever they want. We've also made friends with people who live in our neighborhood, so now whenever we go to the nearby park or take a walk, we see friends.
Our culture is so into promoting individual maximization -- focus on YOUR family, YOUR job, etc -- we so quickly throw community under the bus in pursuit of individual gains. I don't blame people for this, as it's an easy message to fall into (and I did for many years). But for me, forsaking some individual gains in order to gain community has been so worthwhile. I feel so satisfied and at home where I live now, when I've only been in this area for 3 years.
Going through the isolation of COVID where we couldn't see grandparents and didn't feel like we could approach neighbors to build relationships, made me swear to never live that kind of isolated life again. I dorkily bought a book about how to build community in your neighborhood and then just forced myself to do what she said, and and it worked!
I have the community I want: friends and family, online and IRL, loose ties and strong.
What I don’t have—and what none of us have, really—is the time and energy to show up for one another as much as we’d like. Some of that’s chronic illness, and a lot of it’s capitalism. But the way to improve my community wouldn’t be more people; it would be fewer working hours (and universal healthcare).
As an immigrant from a trust based culture, it has taken me a long time to build a trust based network in a culture based on coercion and incentives. I have a descent network now that consists of my children and immediate family, neighbors, church friends and a handful of local friends along with an international network of friends. However, I really wish that the physical layout of American communities would be less antisocial. Everything involves a damn car! People should live in multigenerational and multisocioeconomic communities that are walkable. Stores, businesses, homes...all mixed up. Instead we have these ridiculous artificial environments where people and activities are segregated. It's an elitist country by design and we need to change that.
Coming out of a high control religion like white evangelicalism I’ve had to grapple with the threat of losing community that has been looming over me since birth. And it’s true--being honest about who I am/what I believe in the past few years have caused family and friends to reject me. So, so many of them.
Right now community is hard because of all of that baggage but knowing my kids need awesome, joyful, queer, neurodivergent and diverse community to flourish helps me know where to put my limited energies. And honestly substack really helps me find community with thoughtful and curious reader-types (my favorite kind of human!).
Our neighborhood - a small little section of only two streets that loop back into themselves - has been going through a little renaissance the last few years. When we moved here 6 years ago every household was like a little island. We drove to work, kids walk off to school, seniors have relatives come in to help care for them.
But then, Covid hit. We all had to stay home and started taking strolls. And, since we were all in the same loop we all slowly started to stroll past each other’s houses, observe each other’s gardens, meet each other’s kids. That summer our neighbors across the street got married on their lawn. We set up a tent on our lawn across the street so the whole neighborhood could relax and have some joy.
The biggest jolt of life to our burgeoning group was the closing of our local elementary school. As our district consolidated due to declining enrollments we lost our closest school, the one to which our children walked each morning. Our families were rezoned to a new school and for the first time our little neighborhood got a bus stop! Due to the winding nature of our two streets we got only ONE bus stop for all the kids. And now, we have a dozen kids spread over 8 families at this stop. We all see each other every morning for 15 minutes and the afternoon for 15 minutes. We catch up on our lives, see the little moments, pick up each other’s kids, and are integrated into each other’s lives.
We now have this thriving, growing community that we feed with not just the bus stops, but also organized trick or treating (plus a stop at the cemetery that abuts our enclave), biweekly potlucks, yearly block parties, spontaneous hang outs, and more. It’s amazing.
You can’t choose your neighbors. So while our house is starting to feel a bit cramped and we could certainly use more space we’re tied to this little spot of community. It’s a little slice of delight in a kinda crazy world.
My community actually looks like my friend who is moving into my family of four's home so that she can save money, and so that she won't be alone, and I won't be alone when my partner travels for work. It looks like not having my mother nearby, so that I need to find mothering in the elders I write to and speak to by phone. It looks like calling a friend when an actual rat's nest falls on me when I open an umbrella, and I panic, and my kids panic; she immediately tells her husband to come over to get rid of it for me. Community is opening my home to neighbors and neighbors of neighbors for potlucks once a month. Community is going on a 3-5 mile hike every week, no matter what, with my friend for the past seven years since we've known each other. We met at a random neighborhood holiday party, and complained about how no one ever followed through, and we promised to follow through on meeting up in the wee hours of the morning for a hike. The community most proximal to me are not my blood relations, but they are steadfast, and they are who come to mind when I think of "emergency contact" and daily contact.
i just graduated college and with my four years here my definition of community has changed a lot. Community to me sounds like i can go over my friends by just shooting her a text, doing errands/groceries with my friends and roommates. I see kind of a lack of intimacy by simply just getting drinks or dinner every 3 months with a friend i just have to recount everything i’ve done the last couple of weeks just to have to do it again. genuinely live life together with the people around me (not just a partner, not just kids.)
So many ways this could go! I look forward to reading people’s thoughts throughout the day.
The thing that’s been top of my mind recently, and for the past 20 years or so but definitely the past several, is wishing more people gave time and attention to local (and state if you’re in the U.S.) civic engagement. There are lots of reasons people don’t, and I think it’s very important to look at barriers for many (times of meetings, for example, which are impossible for many, so it helps to have a cohort that takes turns or reports back or something from city council or school board, etc.), but I cannot forget something a friend said to me in December of 2016 when I mentioned all of the urgent things that we needed focus on at the state legislature in the coming session: “I guess the more local things just don’t seem as interesting to me.” That session the legislature cut an enormous amount of health care and school funding.
So, a lot of what I think about is who shows up at all those boring meanings of the planning departments, the library boards, the fish & wildlife agencies, water courts … and what they manage to accomplish.
Outside of my husband/family/coworkers, my community is built upon two pillars - 1. The fitness studio three blocks from my house and 2. In-person/local and online book clubs. Both are truly wonderful, supportive, encouraging, and healthy in the collective sense (read - no drama), and I have made lots of individual friendships for movies, tea dates and evening walks. What’s still missing for me is more people to connect with in my age demographic (mid-50s).
Jul 23, 2023·edited Jul 23, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
I’m grateful for this thread showing up at the time it did, as I literally had a reminder to myself to “ask Anne for advice on this and see if anyone else had thoughts, given the stuff she writes about”.
I’m 27 and have spent the last decade in NYC, enjoying what I thought was a robust and wide-reaching community in the city. After a recent breakup and the gift of age (I know, not that much aging), my priorities have shifted in the direction this article suggests - away from proximate drinking buddies or once-every-three-month catchups and towards deeper, easy, relieving, comfortable, and nourishing connections.
I recently took stock of my network and realized that most of my true best friends have moved out of the city, which has left me feeling jaded and disconnected. New York has been home for a long time, but it requires a near-crippling amount of independence and effort to feel comfortable. The informal networks one builds there actually can be quite strong and frequent, and people meet easily. But oftentimes, such friendships are sequestered to a specific activity (“these are my soccer friends!”) or interest (“we go out drinking every weekend, but I don’t know what she does for work”). Sometimes, it almost feels too informal, and we lack a sense of true security and support - this is felt most strongly during the quiet moments I used to share with my partner - a rainy dinner, morning walks in the park, a calm Sunday with nothing booked, or when trying to care properly for a pet in the city as a single person (update: I can’t). I’m a better person when relaxed and supported, but am miserable when bored and lonely - and that’s kept me far too long in a city that distracts me well, but doesn’t always keep me around people who need and truly love me.
All that to say, I’m considering parting ways with NYC (dynamic, distracting, chaotic, noisy, offensively expensive) and moving to DC (a short drive from my family and my pets, no friends yet, stable, clean, familiar, and maybe at times very lonely and boring). Something inside me hopes that moving will allow me to build the communities I wish to have. At the minimum, I know it would at satisfy at least a few key needs - I will be back with my beloved pets who need me and miss me (don’t even get me started on how much I miss them), and I can have daily dinners with my parents who love me and also want to do things like play tennis on a whim (a luxury of time that I know will not exist forever).
However, friends and partners are equally important, and difficult to build/keep. Losing the proximate but loose connections is a scary thought, and I’m apprehensive to dive into the unknowns (who will I date? What am I leaving behind? What/who will I become? Am I giving up on myself?). Moving and starting over in the hopes of upgrading is, frankly, terrifying, and in a post-COVID world, social improvement strictly by way of changing locations is not guaranteed.
I’m wondering if anyone in these threads has ever had the same personal struggle with the mid-twenties and/or NYC experience where you found yourself single, young, curious, and vibrant, but left a pretty good place anyway in the hopes of building something better.
When I was a kid, we lived in a house between two other houses. Our neighbours to the west were an older couple who we called The Sheddins (their last name), and our neighbour to the east was an older woman named Rose. My brother and I were always welcome in their homes: they have us granola bars (which I suspect they bought just for us) and treated us kind of like grandchildren. Rose woukd tell us to get down if we climbed too high in her tree, and the Sheddins let us play in (or run through) their front yard. I say all this because I immediately thought of my neighbourhood when I thought about communtiy—partly just because I think about neighbourhoods a lot, and partly because I've found that the people I interact with in-person, on a daily basis, are the people who become my community. When I look at the neighbourhood I live in now, I think a lot about the seniors that live in our community and how important relationships with seniors (who I wasn't related to) were to me when I was young. My partner and I have tried to develop ties with many of the seniors in our communtiy. We talk regularly to the woman across the street about our gardens , we trade desserts, and we have drinks in her backyard (she really likes Prosecco). She has a cat named Alberto that she calls in each night, and her voice, saying Alberto's name, is such a part of our neighbourhood. We've tried to develop similar friendships with a number of people who live in the senior centre around the corner from our house. I think density is neighbourhoods is important, but at least in the city I live in, density-focussed approaches often ignore diversity, and seniors are a part of my community that seem to be increasingly marginalized in the push for density. My brother-in-law and I are currently working on a project to rethink how development would look if we thought differently about how we build neighbourhood communities.
My existing community is great, a wonderful mix of in-person and remote friends, so I don't want to write about that. I am going to write about the community I wish existed instead ... and what I wish is, the men would show up. Frequently would be nice, I'd settle for occasionally, but as it is, I see men partcipating in community pretty much not at all.
Not because I miss men, not because we need them either. But because they are half of the population with the most money and resources, and I wish they would do even the barest minimum in participating in this basic element of humaning.
I am deeply craving and hoping for community that is spontaneous and supportive. Lockdown has taught me how much seeing people in person means to me, so I’m trying to figure out how to make that happen more often (whether that’s connecting more deeply with my neighbors or taking more trips to see faraway friends). I find myself longing for a life where friends drop in for dinner, or stop by on their way home from work for a hug and to share a quick bit of news. I want intergenerational relationships. I want a frequency and a casualness of contact that leads to real intimacy and vulnerability, in the hopes that at some point it would become something that can exist and move forward without me having to take every step myself.
I don’t really consider my family to be my community. Community is so important to me, and I have little in common with my family in terms of values, including the value of community. So that’s out. Friends are very important. Strangely, I talk to a lot of strangers both for my job and because I bike and take public transit (in a city where that’s not a predominant mode) and I consider most other people doing the same to be my community. I’ve been cared for and have learned a lot and helped others just by sitting at a bus shelter or talking with a few kids when I’m on the bike. I was raised in a very not-social upper middle class white family, and moving to a city that is not majority white has been so important in my development of the concept of community. What I’m missing? Family, yes. Neighbors. I live in a racially segregated city and as a white person....I think a lot of white (middle/upper class) people aren’t great at building the community I value. Not just planned events and block parties, but spontaneous conversations and asking for help from strangers. I got mugged and the people who made me feel safe were not the cops but the multiple strangers who checked on me and gave me their numbers of I needed help, which was a short insight that such a thing is possible.
I’m missing, though, a revolutionary community of others who are educated and interested in fighting the property-obsessed way of being. I am missing a community of other organizers. They exist, but finding them in white spaces (again, segregation) is difficult and I sometimes feel alone, especially when the people who I most connect with have kids, so I have such limited time with them. I have been thinking about how to find them on the internet (NOT social media).
It’s a good question and forgive my meandering answer or any sweeping generalizations. It’s the question I think about all the time.
I recently was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My community is my friends and family in real time...but I found a support group online that helped me immensely.
Everyone pulled together and made sure I was clean and comfortable. But the online community was I able to cry and laugh and vent. I went through surgery and lo and behold the tumor was benign! I have no complaints of the community in which I am involved in, we pulled together.
There are 2 pieces of community that are missing for me, and their absence relates (I think) to living in a high income, career driven, upper middle class community. First - friends who we can see regularly, spontaneously. It seems like everyone here is SO BUSY. They have work stuff, and kids have lots of enrichment activities after school and anytime we get together it needs to be planned weeks in advance, which then feels like a work update meeting. I have tried to organize a get together at the same time each week so people could stop by if they were available and there was so much enthusiasm about the idea but most didn’t make it. I am so thankful to the family that came consistently. I walk my kids around the neighborhood and most people are not playing outside -- people just stick to themselves.
The other is brown and black folks. I joke that sometimes I want to stick a sign on my chest saying I am looking for brown mom friends. We are a racially mixed family (I’m a person of color, partner isn’t) and I crave the shorthand that could come from being friends with other people that have the shared experience living in this largely white area.
If anyone has suggestions to help either of these I’m all ears
In the past couple years I've worked really hard to build community around where I live. I have two young kids so "going places" is super hard and un-fun for me. We've had success bringing people close--we basically built a family compound, and now my mom and my son's early childhood nanny both live next door, and the kids can run over to their houses whenever they want. We've also made friends with people who live in our neighborhood, so now whenever we go to the nearby park or take a walk, we see friends.
Our culture is so into promoting individual maximization -- focus on YOUR family, YOUR job, etc -- we so quickly throw community under the bus in pursuit of individual gains. I don't blame people for this, as it's an easy message to fall into (and I did for many years). But for me, forsaking some individual gains in order to gain community has been so worthwhile. I feel so satisfied and at home where I live now, when I've only been in this area for 3 years.
Going through the isolation of COVID where we couldn't see grandparents and didn't feel like we could approach neighbors to build relationships, made me swear to never live that kind of isolated life again. I dorkily bought a book about how to build community in your neighborhood and then just forced myself to do what she said, and and it worked!
I have the community I want: friends and family, online and IRL, loose ties and strong.
What I don’t have—and what none of us have, really—is the time and energy to show up for one another as much as we’d like. Some of that’s chronic illness, and a lot of it’s capitalism. But the way to improve my community wouldn’t be more people; it would be fewer working hours (and universal healthcare).
As an immigrant from a trust based culture, it has taken me a long time to build a trust based network in a culture based on coercion and incentives. I have a descent network now that consists of my children and immediate family, neighbors, church friends and a handful of local friends along with an international network of friends. However, I really wish that the physical layout of American communities would be less antisocial. Everything involves a damn car! People should live in multigenerational and multisocioeconomic communities that are walkable. Stores, businesses, homes...all mixed up. Instead we have these ridiculous artificial environments where people and activities are segregated. It's an elitist country by design and we need to change that.
Coming out of a high control religion like white evangelicalism I’ve had to grapple with the threat of losing community that has been looming over me since birth. And it’s true--being honest about who I am/what I believe in the past few years have caused family and friends to reject me. So, so many of them.
Right now community is hard because of all of that baggage but knowing my kids need awesome, joyful, queer, neurodivergent and diverse community to flourish helps me know where to put my limited energies. And honestly substack really helps me find community with thoughtful and curious reader-types (my favorite kind of human!).
Our neighborhood - a small little section of only two streets that loop back into themselves - has been going through a little renaissance the last few years. When we moved here 6 years ago every household was like a little island. We drove to work, kids walk off to school, seniors have relatives come in to help care for them.
But then, Covid hit. We all had to stay home and started taking strolls. And, since we were all in the same loop we all slowly started to stroll past each other’s houses, observe each other’s gardens, meet each other’s kids. That summer our neighbors across the street got married on their lawn. We set up a tent on our lawn across the street so the whole neighborhood could relax and have some joy.
The biggest jolt of life to our burgeoning group was the closing of our local elementary school. As our district consolidated due to declining enrollments we lost our closest school, the one to which our children walked each morning. Our families were rezoned to a new school and for the first time our little neighborhood got a bus stop! Due to the winding nature of our two streets we got only ONE bus stop for all the kids. And now, we have a dozen kids spread over 8 families at this stop. We all see each other every morning for 15 minutes and the afternoon for 15 minutes. We catch up on our lives, see the little moments, pick up each other’s kids, and are integrated into each other’s lives.
We now have this thriving, growing community that we feed with not just the bus stops, but also organized trick or treating (plus a stop at the cemetery that abuts our enclave), biweekly potlucks, yearly block parties, spontaneous hang outs, and more. It’s amazing.
You can’t choose your neighbors. So while our house is starting to feel a bit cramped and we could certainly use more space we’re tied to this little spot of community. It’s a little slice of delight in a kinda crazy world.
My community actually looks like my friend who is moving into my family of four's home so that she can save money, and so that she won't be alone, and I won't be alone when my partner travels for work. It looks like not having my mother nearby, so that I need to find mothering in the elders I write to and speak to by phone. It looks like calling a friend when an actual rat's nest falls on me when I open an umbrella, and I panic, and my kids panic; she immediately tells her husband to come over to get rid of it for me. Community is opening my home to neighbors and neighbors of neighbors for potlucks once a month. Community is going on a 3-5 mile hike every week, no matter what, with my friend for the past seven years since we've known each other. We met at a random neighborhood holiday party, and complained about how no one ever followed through, and we promised to follow through on meeting up in the wee hours of the morning for a hike. The community most proximal to me are not my blood relations, but they are steadfast, and they are who come to mind when I think of "emergency contact" and daily contact.
i just graduated college and with my four years here my definition of community has changed a lot. Community to me sounds like i can go over my friends by just shooting her a text, doing errands/groceries with my friends and roommates. I see kind of a lack of intimacy by simply just getting drinks or dinner every 3 months with a friend i just have to recount everything i’ve done the last couple of weeks just to have to do it again. genuinely live life together with the people around me (not just a partner, not just kids.)
So many ways this could go! I look forward to reading people’s thoughts throughout the day.
The thing that’s been top of my mind recently, and for the past 20 years or so but definitely the past several, is wishing more people gave time and attention to local (and state if you’re in the U.S.) civic engagement. There are lots of reasons people don’t, and I think it’s very important to look at barriers for many (times of meetings, for example, which are impossible for many, so it helps to have a cohort that takes turns or reports back or something from city council or school board, etc.), but I cannot forget something a friend said to me in December of 2016 when I mentioned all of the urgent things that we needed focus on at the state legislature in the coming session: “I guess the more local things just don’t seem as interesting to me.” That session the legislature cut an enormous amount of health care and school funding.
So, a lot of what I think about is who shows up at all those boring meanings of the planning departments, the library boards, the fish & wildlife agencies, water courts … and what they manage to accomplish.
Outside of my husband/family/coworkers, my community is built upon two pillars - 1. The fitness studio three blocks from my house and 2. In-person/local and online book clubs. Both are truly wonderful, supportive, encouraging, and healthy in the collective sense (read - no drama), and I have made lots of individual friendships for movies, tea dates and evening walks. What’s still missing for me is more people to connect with in my age demographic (mid-50s).
I’m grateful for this thread showing up at the time it did, as I literally had a reminder to myself to “ask Anne for advice on this and see if anyone else had thoughts, given the stuff she writes about”.
I’m 27 and have spent the last decade in NYC, enjoying what I thought was a robust and wide-reaching community in the city. After a recent breakup and the gift of age (I know, not that much aging), my priorities have shifted in the direction this article suggests - away from proximate drinking buddies or once-every-three-month catchups and towards deeper, easy, relieving, comfortable, and nourishing connections.
I recently took stock of my network and realized that most of my true best friends have moved out of the city, which has left me feeling jaded and disconnected. New York has been home for a long time, but it requires a near-crippling amount of independence and effort to feel comfortable. The informal networks one builds there actually can be quite strong and frequent, and people meet easily. But oftentimes, such friendships are sequestered to a specific activity (“these are my soccer friends!”) or interest (“we go out drinking every weekend, but I don’t know what she does for work”). Sometimes, it almost feels too informal, and we lack a sense of true security and support - this is felt most strongly during the quiet moments I used to share with my partner - a rainy dinner, morning walks in the park, a calm Sunday with nothing booked, or when trying to care properly for a pet in the city as a single person (update: I can’t). I’m a better person when relaxed and supported, but am miserable when bored and lonely - and that’s kept me far too long in a city that distracts me well, but doesn’t always keep me around people who need and truly love me.
All that to say, I’m considering parting ways with NYC (dynamic, distracting, chaotic, noisy, offensively expensive) and moving to DC (a short drive from my family and my pets, no friends yet, stable, clean, familiar, and maybe at times very lonely and boring). Something inside me hopes that moving will allow me to build the communities I wish to have. At the minimum, I know it would at satisfy at least a few key needs - I will be back with my beloved pets who need me and miss me (don’t even get me started on how much I miss them), and I can have daily dinners with my parents who love me and also want to do things like play tennis on a whim (a luxury of time that I know will not exist forever).
However, friends and partners are equally important, and difficult to build/keep. Losing the proximate but loose connections is a scary thought, and I’m apprehensive to dive into the unknowns (who will I date? What am I leaving behind? What/who will I become? Am I giving up on myself?). Moving and starting over in the hopes of upgrading is, frankly, terrifying, and in a post-COVID world, social improvement strictly by way of changing locations is not guaranteed.
I’m wondering if anyone in these threads has ever had the same personal struggle with the mid-twenties and/or NYC experience where you found yourself single, young, curious, and vibrant, but left a pretty good place anyway in the hopes of building something better.
When I was a kid, we lived in a house between two other houses. Our neighbours to the west were an older couple who we called The Sheddins (their last name), and our neighbour to the east was an older woman named Rose. My brother and I were always welcome in their homes: they have us granola bars (which I suspect they bought just for us) and treated us kind of like grandchildren. Rose woukd tell us to get down if we climbed too high in her tree, and the Sheddins let us play in (or run through) their front yard. I say all this because I immediately thought of my neighbourhood when I thought about communtiy—partly just because I think about neighbourhoods a lot, and partly because I've found that the people I interact with in-person, on a daily basis, are the people who become my community. When I look at the neighbourhood I live in now, I think a lot about the seniors that live in our community and how important relationships with seniors (who I wasn't related to) were to me when I was young. My partner and I have tried to develop ties with many of the seniors in our communtiy. We talk regularly to the woman across the street about our gardens , we trade desserts, and we have drinks in her backyard (she really likes Prosecco). She has a cat named Alberto that she calls in each night, and her voice, saying Alberto's name, is such a part of our neighbourhood. We've tried to develop similar friendships with a number of people who live in the senior centre around the corner from our house. I think density is neighbourhoods is important, but at least in the city I live in, density-focussed approaches often ignore diversity, and seniors are a part of my community that seem to be increasingly marginalized in the push for density. My brother-in-law and I are currently working on a project to rethink how development would look if we thought differently about how we build neighbourhood communities.
Really appreciate reading everyone's answers.