C
Community - Complexity
Community
Community is one of those words where I wonder if we’re better off knowing it and feeling it than defining it.
It’s warmth, ease, and comfort. It’s the kind of place that playfully challenges us to grow into who we’re meant to become.
Everything else is just a gathering, or a group, or a meeting.
Community contains a pinch of belonging, a dash of humor, and a large dose of acceptance. It’s not always smooth. There are awkward moments, missed opportunities, and quiet seasons. Underneath it all though is the sense that we belong.
When we walk away from a community, we’re excited to share with others how we’ve found our people.
The best communities make us better people not by absolute affirmation, but by gentle nudges toward transformation.
See: connection, care, cooperation, equity, belonging, boundaries, loneliness.
Comparison
Am I closer? Full stop.
Not am I better than…
Not they’re much better than me at…
Just, am I closer?
That’s the comparison most worth paying attention to. Closer to what, we might ask? To the kind of person we’re trying to become, and the kind of life that feels like us.
It’s not that we don’t look at others and find places we’d like to grow or things they do that we’d like to learn. All that stuff is data we feed into the growth and formation machine of our lives.
However, we cannot compare our starting line with someone else’s fully formed finish line.
What we can compare is our yesterday to our today. Did I take that step or that risk? Did I have that conversation? Did I try something new, and how did that impact my life and sense of self?
That’s it. Helpful constructive comparison is between yesterday-you and today-you.
See: envy, shame, data, curiosity, enough, identity, social media.
Compassion
I absolutely hate that I have to write that compassion is not a weakness.
I can’t stand that I must remind us that it takes strength to stare in the face of suffering and proclaim, “Not today!”
I’m heartbroken that we’ve created tiers of humanity and mete out our empathy, dignity, care, and concern only for those who make the cut.
Compassion is resistance to dehumanization.
Compassion is standing with those who suffer without being consumed by it.
Compassion is declaring the dignity of all with our actions.
Thoughts and prayers, be nice, or don’t make waves, none of that is compassion. Real compassion makes those performances look paper-thin.
It takes backbone to not turn away from another’s suffering; fortitude to resist the systems and habits that create evil and oppression; and strength to challenge those who would choose to hurt rather than help one another.
I’m getting ahead of myself though. Maybe we can just start with imagining the person in front of us deserves some dignity.
See: empathy, dignity, justice, power, boundaries, courage.
Complexity
Identities, stories, experiences, relationships, feelings, values, and decisions all require us to think and discern with some measure of complexity.
Complexity is the word we use when we finally understand that our lives aren’t linear and neat, and that both/and is the best way forward. It recognizes that every situation is new and requires bits and pieces of what we’ve learned along the way rather than one single identity or performance.
With complexity, every feeling, identity, and relationship is a little bit new, because we come to them as slightly new selves each time. When we begin experimenting, we recognize that change is afoot and life isn’t neat.
When every bone in our body wants to run toward either/or, complexity holds us still in the knowledge that both/and will work out better. Complexity isn’t about being vague or refusing to decide. It’s about letting the whole truth into the room, not just the convenient half.
I did my best and it still didn’t work out.
I’m grateful they’re not in pain, and angry they’re gone.
I’m confident in my ability to do this, and it still terrifies me.
It’s easy to become rigid when we compartmentalize our lives, feelings, and relationships. There’s something comforting and safe about believing we can pull the same identity or feeling out in similar situations and glide through it.
It would work if life were linear and the compartments we create stayed clean and neat.
Life, unfortunately, tends toward chaos rather than order. If we’re truthful, our neat compartments are more like a clean room with a bulging closet. We’ve stuffed it to the brim with unprocessed experiences, feelings, stories, and identities. It might look orderly but a closet full of “I’ll get to it later” is about to explode off its hinges.
Complexity simply asks us to open the door and sort that shit out. It takes time, effort, and energy, but it’s worth it. We take things out, make decisions about where it lives, give a spot in the room or give it the heave-ho.
And, when we’re done, the room we live in is rich and homey, full of color and photos and blankets and reminders of where we’ve been alongside the promise of being present to what comes next.
See: depth, identity, double bind, discernment, stories, grief, endings.