Community Will Save You

The radical act of putting up with the hassle and staying put

I am sitting in my small wood-paneled study, staring at my black-painted fingernails and trying to digest today’s news. A lava lamp I rescued from a thrift store two years ago bubbles slowly beside me. The world is loud, and I keep wanting to be alone.

An age that has grown comfortable with being alone

We live in an age when we can handle almost everything without meeting anyone. Food arrives at the door, a screen is enough for a conversation, and an uncomfortable person can simply be blocked. It is convenient, but in the same measure we are forgetting how to grow used to one another.

Community is a hassle by nature

Neighborhood groups, town meetings, and small clubs always have someone who is a hassle: someone long-winded, someone who is late, someone who thinks the opposite of you. Community means staying with those people. It means remaining instead of leaving, putting up with the irritation, and showing up again next week.

A community is not a group of people who like each other, but a group of people who have decided not to leave.

• Go to the same gathering once a month, and keep going
• Learn the names of at least three neighbors
• Practice asking for help
• Don’t dodge an uncomfortable conversation; hear it out

Loneliness is now treated not as a personal problem but as a public health issue. If so, the prescription must go beyond the individual. Putting up with the hassle and staying put, that quiet radicalism, may be what saves us.