Ingredients For A Thriving Community — A Preamble

One man returns from burying his father in their homeland, yet is too busy now with caregiving his wife and three kids (including a five-month-old baby) to grief his recent loss.

Another struggles with his decision to resign from work after less than a year, due to mental stress triggered by caregiving his special needs children. (It happened too in his previous job)

Yet another man has to deal with his wife’s sudden request for a divorce.

It’s hard to put into words what to do or how to feel when you hear such anecdotes, other than to say that life gets messy. Yes, it’s a clear ‘when’, not ‘if’. For none of us are spared the vicissitudes of life; only how much we each can bear.

Welcome to the reality of life in community!

Is Community Where We Flourish?

The examples above are real but are by no means exhaustive.

When you are in a community of men trying to be stand-up guys on the home turf, parenting children, caregiving loved ones, and making ends meet, it can get downright brutal on some days.

Of course, not every day is traumatic. Sometimes the agony is simply over an unfinished math worksheet courtesy of an uncooperative kid. Or a decision as to whether my son should sign up for a soccer clinic held a good hour’s drive away from home.

But when life gets really hard to bear like in the examples shared above, it can seem doubly tragic when you have to shoulder them all alone.

Which is why I’m a firm believer we must surround ourselves with a living, breathing, and engaged community of fellow sojourners on this crazy journey we call Life.

It’s been increasingly clear to me in the last couple of years that we exist and flourish best when we exist in community.

Not Together Alone. Just Alone.

Now hold on. I see what you’re doing. You’re rolling your eyes at someone who seems to be wasting your time by stating the obvious. That we exist best when we exist in community.

But is it really obvious?

Look around you.

Do you see people connecting? I mean, really connecting, with those around them?

Or are they simply going through the motions of engagement while all the while offering perfunctory replies they already memorised in their heads? Or are they more likely phubbing — texting or doomscrolling on their portable devices — as the other person drones on? And what about the worse of the lot, those who are only interested to listen to the sound of their own voices?!

To me, what might once have been how societies flourish — in tight-knit communities — seems increasingly a thing of the past.

Our reduced need for actual human-to-human interactions these days is all thanks to the constantly accelerating advancements in technology and all things convenient. (For example, to this day I’m still blown away by the idea that fridges can now order your groceries for you!)

It shouldn’t take much to realise that many of us have been lulled by our shiny inventions into living solitary lives.

Any wonder we’re listening less to others and becoming more self-absorbed and insular? Or, horror of horrors, having the same inane conversations time after time, like the ones you find in large extended family gatherings around festive occasions like Chinese New Year.

Every. Single. Year.

A Thriving Community Starts With Attending & Listening

I believe we’ve lost the art of listening. Something so basic to our ability as humans to connect and thrive in concert with one another on this increasingly disconnected planet.

And the only way to regain this is by plugging ourselves into a living, breathing community of fellow humans. And to listen.

Simply attend and listen.

For me, that’s the first ingredient to fostering a community. And the best place to begin this new mini-series I’m writing on what are the ingredients for a thriving community.

While I’m no expert and have myself only been plugged into a genuine community in the last couple of years, I think I’ve picked up on some of the key factors that have made a difference and kept my community going.

So you can call this a “how-to” manual of sorts if you like, though it’s unlikely to be anything more than a work-in-progress and imperfect.

Still, I hope you will join me in the coming weeks as I try to unpack what I’ve learned about what makes for a thriving community okay?

And the first thing I hope to unpack in the next post will be the art of attending and listening well.