Of being included, community and loneliness…

As a kid, you sometimes don’t get invited to a party all your friends are going to. And it is just not a good feeling.

As an adult, you think you have it all figured out by now. But not always so, and when it does happens, it is just not a good feeling. As adults, I wonder if we think of it as a sense of community. And maybe it makes us wonder if the community we imagined around a group of friends was never there to begin with. Or if they never thought of us as being part of their community.

Or perhaps we wonder if we matter as much to them as they seem to matter to us. We wonder why we sense a pang of non-belonging, of not mattering, of them not being as accommodating towards us as we would probably have been towards them. Yes, many of us have probably been there… and it’s not a good feeling.

The old me would have shrugged it off and said maybe it was just not meant to be and that I need to be with people with whom I would never have such issues in the first place. But the now me wonders if I am not able to form lasting community due to illness or the person illness has made me.  For illness makes you withdrawn. It keeps you wanting to stay in your shell. It makes you insecure and uncertain of yourself, of how long your energy will last, of when you will begin to fade, of when you will stop having fun, of when you will stop being fun, of when you will no longer be able to connect.

And I wonder if my lack of ability to participate in a community affects my family and that is the part that hurts me the most and that is the only part that makes me want to explore this. For I have a great family, but I suspect we all need a community beyond our family for a sense of well-being.  

I also suspect lack of community can only amount to loneliness and loneliness is a scary thing for many of us. Agreed loneliness and community is different for different people and different cultures. And I would have probably laughed in your face a decade ago if you had even suggested that I would write or dwell on the topic.

Now I am a fairly social person. I talk to strangers all the time; I make friends easily; I generally like people. But building a community and being part of it takes time and energy and consistency and connection and some degree of continuity. And perhaps illness or lack of energy has come in the way of that.  

I am not a sociologist (and a sociologist would probably laugh at the inexpert stream of thought here). Nor do I have any answers. But since community is important (especially since I feel I am in some way affecting my family’s involvement in community), it may worthwhile to pause and figure out what it means to each of us.