CHAPTER 1
Longing for Connection
One of the truths of our time is this hunger deep in people all over the planetfor coming into relationship with each other.
—M. C. Richards
We all want meaningful connections to those we love, to the places we live andthe people with whom we share a neighborhood, a town, a country, a world. Wewant to feel that we're seen, known, and appreciated; we want to contribute, tomake a difference in the world. We want to feel part of a larger whole, that ourindividual lives aren't, in the words of Daphne Rose Kingma, like a "crueljoke." In a word, we long for community.
And yet, such connections seem elusive, particularly now. We are so busy, webarely know our fellow apartment-dwellers, much less the old lady in the houseon the corner. And when we do reach out, it seems that within a few months, we—orthey—have moved on to the next job, the next relationship, the next town.
Our world is changing, and life seems to be sweeping us along with it. Aftertens of thousands of years of slow, almost incremental development, we aresuddenly at a point in history when change itself is the moving force, movingfaster and faster beyond what we can comprehend, much less keep up with. Theprocess of that change is often blazingly apparent: the gadgetry of modernliving invades our days, the bright lights and screaming electronics providingever-present background noise and distraction. There is an aura of almostelectrical excitement in the atmosphere as we move from cars, planes, and Nordictracks to our computers, microwaves, faxes, and e-mail. Our mastery over ourphysical surroundings has brought us to the doorway of incredible possibilities,and yet we know intuitively that it has come at a price. We are beginning torealize that the most pressing challenge we face today is not technological, notto build a better machine, but to grow up as a species, moving past our recklessadolescence and taking conscious responsibility for our behavior. We are alsochallenged to find new ways of being connected to one another and to the Earthitself.
It is a task we are ill prepared for. We have spent most of our history in thethroes of adventure, exploring, expanding, inventing, and conquering. Thepractice of introspection, contemplation about the meaning, weight, and purposeof our existence, has been largely the province of academic and spiritualleaders. The rest of us have simply tried to make do, dealing as best we canwith the challenges of daily life. The weightier decisions, the power andresponsibility for bending the flow of history, were out of our grasp. This isno longer true, for one of the side effects of the world's growing acceptance ofdemocracy— combined with extraordinary advancements in communicationstechnology— has been the steady emergence of public opinion as the ultimatesource of power.
Political leaders can still lead and persuade, but the days when they could benda nation's direction to their wills are fast disappearing. World opinion has anincreasingly deeper and more profound influence on the behavior of supposedly"sovereign" states. Slowly, almost outside of our range of perception, thebeliefs and opinions of individuals all over the world are becoming not onlymore clearly articulated and understood, but more powerful.
With that increase in power comes a parallel increase in responsibility, andthat too is something people are beginning to take more seriously. From theinternational grassroots movement to ban land mines to the extraordinary globalenvironmental movement, individual people are assuming a greater degree ofpersonal responsibility for worldwide issues and are acting on it to an extentunimaginable just a few decades ago. We are recognizing how interconnected weare, how much of a global community we can be, but we are uncertain what formsthese connections will take.
That's because the rhythm and structure of what we know of community iscenturies old. Our way of feeling connected to a place and to the people of thatplace has not changed significantly in the tens of thousands of years oforganized human history, and now, seemingly suddenly and irrevocably, virtuallyevery old form of community is collapsing all around us. Small towns arebecoming big cities or are being swallowed up by even bigger cities; extendedfamilies are spread out across the land; ties of tribe, clan, and region haveceased to fulfill the comforting task of locating us intimately within acommunity. The bonds that once held us have been broken, and we are left with adisturbing unease, a sense of being cast adrift. We are no longer sure where wefit or where we can turn for comfort and a sense of belonging. In theory ourcommunity has expanded globally, but in the marrow of our bones most of us feelcut off and alone.
This is a modern human problem. For most of history, belonging to a communitywas taken for granted. Whether clan, tribe, small town, or big-cityneighborhood, it was there people were born and raised, and it was withincommunity that individuals struggled to find their place. The fact of communitywas a given; the fitting into it and the defining of the individuals within itwere the issues. In our lifetimes, for the first time in history, the groundrules have shifted. We grow up with breathtakingly unlimited opportunity to findour own ways, but in increasing numbers we grow up outside the steady comfort ofany true community; the absence of that all-encompassing caress leaves usfeeling deeply disconnected.
The Community of Kindness has grown out of our experience with the "Random Actsof Kindness" movement. As the publishers of three bestselling books, we havespent a great deal of time thinking about why the Random Acts of Kindness seriesstruck such a chord; why, at last count, eleven countries, 40,000 individuals,15,000 schools, 1,000 churches, and 450 towns, cities, and counties in theUnited States are participating in Random Acts of Kindness week in February. Asthe years progressed and the kindness movement grew internationally, it becameclear that the success of the books, and the desire to do good deeds, random orplanned, results from the sense of community created by performing such acts.When we feed the meter of a car about to get a ticket, we connect to the personwho owns that car, even if we never meet. When we leave a bouquet of flowers ona neighbor's doorstep because we've heard he's having chemotherapy, we forge abond, if only briefly. And when we read about such actions, we connect not onlyto those who have performed such deeds, but to the tribe of all others who arereading about them. It is out of our longing for community that so many of ushave joined the "kindness revolution."
So we at Conari decided to write a book of meditations on community itself, abook that would encourage us all to connect deeply to those who are already inour lives, to think creatively about new ways we can reach out to the widerworld, and to actively participate in the creation of new forms of communitythat will be deeply satisfying and help make the world a better place. TheCommunity of Kindness is full of stories from folks who have received orwitnessed acts of kindness, as well as thoughts from a wide variety of peoplewho are working to create community.
As we thought about and spoke to people about the notion of community, we beganto see that whatever forms of community emerge over the next decades, the oneabsolute prerequisite for their success is simple human kindness. It is onlythrough kindness that the fundamental human desire to connect to one anotherwill have the quality of compassion that allows us to understand and forgive thestumblings and failures of ourselves and others. It is our passionate hope thatthese meditations will assist us all in bringing kindness to the forefront ofour lives, so that we can fulfill our longing for community in ways that betterfit our changing world.
CHAPTER 2
Remembering the Kind Embrace of Community
We are members of one great body, planted by nature in a mutual love, and fittedfor a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.
—Seneca
In some deep, often unrecognized way, each of us carries in our hearts ayearning for the community we know has been lost—a closeness, a quality ofconnection to other people that sings with vibrancy and shines with vitality.This feeling calls out to us of a time and place of belonging, of comfort, ofbeing nestled in the hands of unquestioned love and embraced by the warmth ofacknowledgment and understanding; a place we can be ourselves and have impact onothers; a place that feels like home.
The source of that longing is multifaceted. At its deepest level it speaks ofour severance from the divine—the banishment from the garden of Eden. Once wewere one, a seamless and effortless unity of love, and now there is a deep acheof emptiness. We have been thrown out and must make our own way back.
Echoing this spiritual separation is the very human separation that begins withour expulsion from our mother's womb and continues unabated through thechildhood process of individuation, until we emerge into adulthood as a separateperson. It seems that, at least in Western culture, half our life is spentseparating, creating distance and boundaries so that we might know where the "I"begins and ends.
Sometimes we are given an extended experience of community during the magicaltime when we have left our childhood behind but have not yet emerged as adults.This is often a time of great personal openness, when we are more willing totrust, more ready to expose our hearts, more eager to assume the best ofintentions and forgive the inevitable dissonance. It is often then, in our lateteens and early twenties, living with friends in houses and apartments with aconstant stream of people circulating through our lives, that we see for thefirst time what living within a true community could feel like.
Almost invariably, the unfinished work of discovering our own identity, our ownneeds and desires, pulls us away from these experiences of the comfort ofothers. For most of that journey of self-discovery, we are either too self-absorbedto notice or too easily mistake a crowd for community. All the while,however, locked away in our hearts is a deeply coded switch that, while we moveinto full possession of our own identity, sits inactive, only to be triggered atthe moment of our success. It is then, in the moment that we become confident ofour individuality, that we begin to feel the unmistakable pull toward a sense oftrue community.
It's easy to misunderstand the sensation. It often feels like a pulling back,back to something we once had—dreamlike memories of holiday gatherings full ofhappy smiling family; fragments of slow summer days with our friends at thewater hole; fishing with Dad; a Fourth of July barbecue with all the cousins.Sometimes it isn't even our own memories we grow nostalgic for, but thewonderful stories of the "good old days" told by parents and grandparents, fullof love and comfort and warmth—or even stories from books that evoked in us apowerful longing for "simpler, kinder times."
As real as those memories might be, it is not the past we long for, not the oldforms that we so desperately need. For most of the old forms of community werebuilt around exclusion and conformity. It was "our" club, our town, our church,our neighborhood, our country, and it was our "sameness" that set us apart fromothers. We _______ (fill in the blank—Italians, Irish, Germans, Puerto Ricans,Mexicans, Blacks, Catholics, Protestants, Jews) stuck together.
The old forms of community have given a us a rich tradition of accomplishmentsand have taught us much about how to be in a community, but they have alsoinstigated and fueled conflict and bloodshed: tribe against tribe, nobilityagainst commoner, religion against religion, country against country, raceagainst race, class against class. The comfort of our sameness has, all toooften, led to hatred, fear, and violence against "otherness." (Witness theterrible bloodshed going on in places where this sense of tribe is still strong—Bosnia,Northern Ireland, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Rwanda, to name just a few.)
While we long for what we have lost, it cannot be found in the past. With ourhearts full of kindness for one another, we must blaze a new path.
Across the Divide
There are no great people except those who have rendered service to humankind.
—Anonymous
"When I was growing up, I was always smiling, always looking on the bright side.Even in my teens and early twenties my friends used to call me the 'cure fordepression.' I can't even remember exactly how I ended up where I did—it seemslike my life just unfolded badly—but by time I was thirty, I had sunk into apretty frightening depression of my own.
"Most of my friends were avoiding me, because I was suddenly the one who neededto be cheered up. A lot of issues which had been trailing me for years, which Ihad been ignoring, just camped at my doorstep and wouldn't go away no matter howhard I tried to banish them. I finally realized I was supposed to actually dealwith these issues, not just smile harder and pretend they'd go away. Things didimprove with that realization, but it still felt like I was running in sandevery—thingwas difficult, brown, and gritty. Having given up my 'It's OK, I'mfine' routine, it now seemed I was being exiled to a world where I would neverbe all right again.
"Then one day heading home from work, without any conscious plan, I got off thesubway a few stops early and found myself walking into a coffee shop. I remembersitting down and wondering what I was doing there, and at exactly that moment agray-haired woman walked up to me and asked me if I was following her. I wastotally flustered and sputtered out some incoherent denial. She took my hand,sat me down, ordered me a drink, and told me she had been sitting across from mein the subway and noticed that I seemed pretty distracted, and wondered if Iwanted to talk about it.
"The situation took me so much by surprise that it cracked me open like aneggshell. I sat there for almost three hours talking to this woman, laughing,crying, and just feeling alive again after what seemed like a long sleep. Herreaching out to me made all the difference! While I continued to struggle for ayear or so, I would remember her kindness to me and have hope."
Sometimes, it takes a total stranger to remind us how closely connected we trulyare. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of work. When we can extend ourselvesacross the barriers that separate us, and gently touch the heart of another, itresonates like the ringing of a well-crafted bell.
Our Longing for Rootedness
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of thehuman soul.
—Simone Weil
"I live in a very nice house just outside Chicago. When we first moved here, Iwas so excited. We had lived in a rented apartment downtown ever since we gotmarried, and I had grown tired of the noise, the space limitations, having noyard, and a constant series of minor but irritating neighbor problems. One ofthe first things I did in our new house was to fix up the yard, which had beenneglected. While I was out there digging away, some people from the neighborhoodcame by to welcome us and comment on the flowers I was putting in. It felt sowonderful.
"We've been here for six years now, and I still love my house and I really loveworking in the yard and turning it into a place of beauty, but I realized awhile ago that something important was missing. At first it was hard to pindown, I just knew that somewhere in my life there was an empty place wheresomething good was supposed to be. After flailing around (I even tried blamingmy husband, but fortunately he just laughed), I finally realized that it wasother people I was missing. Not anyone in particular, just friendly faces sayinggood morning, talking about the weather or gardening. I had everything I wantedin a neighborhood except the hum and sparkle of people just being friendly. Irealized that for me, it isn't just the physical beauty and arrangement of homeand garden that are important. More than anything I need to feel the sweetenergy only people can provide.
"Once I decided what was missing, I set out to draw my neighbors outside theirbackyards a little more often. At the beginning of December, I wrote up aboutthirty invitations to a 'neighborhood open house' for a Sunday afternoon betweenthree and six o'clock during the holiday season and slipped them under myneighbors' front doors. The time rolled around and my husband and I sat there,worrying if anyone would show up. Well, around forty people started swarming theplace, and everyone had a great time. It was so successful that someone elsevolunteered to host a neighborhood swim party in the summer. And that afternoonwe talked a bit about traffic problems and crime and decided to hold quarterlymeetings to deal with these issues."
Sometimes all it takes is someone to get the ball rolling. If the need anddesire is there, the effort doesn't have to be strenuous. If you are sitting inyour house wishing to be closer to your neighbors, chances are they are feelingthe same way too. Initiate a get-together and see what happens.
