Community Part 3

Here are a few scenarios related to location, and community. It has been valuable for me to think through these possible scenarios as I think about my current communities.

Friends without a location
A friend gets a job in another city, and now she lives far away from her community. Before she left, she had a different going away party for each location she frequented. The whole community is sad at each location, not because they are no longer friends, but because they feel like the have lost her from the community.

She can no longer share the location with them, so she is no longer a part of the community. She can still chat with her old friends online, travel back to see them inexpensively, even do a video conference with multiple friends at the same time, but she cannot truly be a part of the community any more.

I think this is a big challenge of globalization. Sometimes its hard to realize how important community attachments are, but even if we do realize how important they are, it can be hard to move in and out of communities so frequently.

A location without friends
When I was in middle school, my family had season tickets to the Air Force Academy football games for many years. By many standards this would be the perfect place for a community. I know that hundreds of college football stadiums around the country are great locations that house thousands of small communities. Strangely enough, for my family, it was not a community location at all.

I'm not identifying this as a negative scenario, I'm simply observing that this situation can exist. It is possitble to have a great location for a community, and to visit it frequently, but never have community there.

For us, we really weren't looking for community at the football stadium, just family time. We sat next to different people every week. We didn't tailgate with a regular group. We didn't meet up with anybody consistently before, after, or during the game. It was a great location, and great family bonding time, but was not a location for community for us.

Friends and a location without frequency
Since I've been married, we had a small community of friends in a different city. We used to visit our friends in Gunnison every year or so with a group of people. It was a fantastic group, and we all developed strong attachments with each other.

Again, this was a positive annual gathering, and I am glad we were able to do this while we could. Nothing negative about this. At the same time, it wasn't a community. The frequency simply wasn't enough, and the distance between us was too far. We are close friends, and always will be, but we are not a part of the same community.

More soon. Also, this was my 300th blog post. I'm proud. Cheers!