So many of us long for community. We talk about it as if it’s something we’ve lost — something we’re trying to return to. We want to feel connected, supported, known. But I’ve been thinking lately about what community actually asks of us, and how rarely we talk about that part.
Community costs something. Often, it costs convenience.
I’ve had conversations with people who say they don’t spend money on those they don’t know, or that they wouldn’t give someone the shirt off their back. They don’t say it unkindly. Sometimes it’s framed as practicality, or boundaries, or self-protection. Still, I find myself quietly affected by these ideas — not because they’re wrong in every context, but because they feel so far from the way I move through the world.
For Christmas, I asked for very little. What I wanted most were toys for children in Mexico I go and see a few times a year— children who manage to hold both joy and heartbreak at the same time. Watching them play with broken toys, or make games out of what others would throw away, stays with me. It’s beautiful, yes, but it also aches. It reminds me how uneven the world is, and how easy it is for many of us to forget that.
The same feeling comes when I see displaced people downtown. I feel it when I notice how quickly we’ve learned to look past one another.
After spending time in Hermosillo and Agua Prieta, the culture of sharing — of feeding one another even when there isn’t much — changed how I understand abundance. I think about the children I gave Halloween candy to, who handed each of us one Skittle and saved the rest for their grandmother. I think about being given tamales by the people who's home we were building. In those moments, generosity wasn’t transactional. It was instinctive.
Growing up as an only child, sharing didn’t come naturally to me. It was something I had to learn slowly, sometimes uncomfortably. But adulthood has a way of widening perspective. I see now how many people are carrying quiet need, and how much lighter things could feel if we reached for one another more often.
I don’t believe community is loud or performative. I think it’s found in small, sometimes inconvenient acts — the ones no one sees, the ones that don’t come with recognition. It asks us to pause, to notice, to give even when it disrupts our plans.
We don’t have to fix everything. But we can soften our edges. We can be less isolating, more open-handed. We can remember that what we hold isn’t just ours. Community, I’m learning, isn’t something we wait for. It’s something we practice daily and gently.
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