I
recently posted the following comment to Twitter. It has by far resonated the
most with folks, so I figured it was interesting enough to squeeze a few more
drops out of it. To get this party started, here it is:
“I am convinced now more than ever that it
is community that keeps us from going overwhelmingly insane. If you can't
laugh, you can't live.”
I am
by nature, or by selection, or by environmental factors, a loner. I can go
great lengths of time by myself, just ask my wife, it is no doubt obnoxious to
a fault.
However,
that being said, I still require and
long for a sense of community. Without people, without interaction,
conversation, folks challenging me, I all but fall apart, in fact (spoiler: soapbox approaching) the one
situation that drives me nuts is when people cannot be good friends.
My
faults, like the one above, are many, but this is the single aspect I’ve
consistently been able to get right. Perhaps it’s my Bingo gimme space—it just
is there without a lot of work going into it.
Nonetheless,
as annoying as that is, and perhaps other situations related, I still need and
have to have relationship, I must
have community.
Beyond
work, beyond family relationships, there must be a broader sense of community
in place- whether that is in church, friendships, under-water basket weaving
groups, I have to find myself as one piece of a larger puzzle. I am not the
entire alphabet, just the letter….hmmm, I am the letter G. I’m really tempted
to take this analogy too far, so I’ll just move away from all the “they all
work together to form words and whatnot…”
Yet,
it’s true. By ourselves we are boring, we are one-dimensional, we are pieces of
cardboard. We are doomed to live an uncomplicated, non-confrontational,
isolated life. And if you’re anything like me, it’s a tempting sentence isn’t
it?
Seemingly yes, a life filled without drama and
pain and frustrations, but with the same fell swoop that you take out all those
players, you also remove joy, laughter, triumph and love.
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