structures of belonging.
I'm participating in a 31-day blogging challenge called reverb10, responding to writing prompts that are designed to elicit reflections on 2010, and hopes for 2011. You can find out more about it here. I am challenging myself to respond to each prompt in 15 minutes or less.
Today's challenge: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?
Structures of belonging.
"You can't make real friends online," someone said to me two years ago.
"Really?" I responded. "They sure feel like real friends."
Facebook and Twitter create structures of belonging, of molecules called humans bouncing up against each other in surprising combinations: "You know her? But you're from two very different parts of my life! How do you know each other?"
We believe we are made up of atoms, but we are made up of stories. And the shortest distance between two people (or more) is a story.
These online communities allow for the sharing of those stories in remarkable, kinetic, interwoven ways. They allow for the story of Donna's apron to unfold, for communal prayers to be offered up for people whose loved ones are dying, for three women in three different states to form an irreversible bond, for laughter to be heard from New Zealand to L.A. to Asheville, North Carolina, about a shared insight. Instantaneously.
My book tour in 2008 for Life is a Verb went to 43 cities, all driven by the invitations of readers of my blog, most of whom I had never met. It was an extraordinary journey into the lives of new friends. And so it was this fall with my recent book tour. I am typing this as I sit in bed in Kathryn Ruth Schuth's house in South Bend, Indiana, a woman I didn't know until she invited me to South Bend to read from Life is a Verb two years ago, and now again I am here.
We create structures of belonging in many ways, don't we? And we also create structures of exclusion in many ways, in just the same ways sometimes. Online gated communities are as real as physical ones. Creating an online universe in which we hear only from people whose views we share is as potent as creating those kinds of communities "in real life," though we need to rethink what "real" is, now.
I know that my online communities–through my blog, through Twitter, through Facebook–are filled with people I love. Love. People I haven't yet met. People I would do anything for. People who would do anything for me. It is magic that way, if we let it unfold and sweep us up into a maelstrom of connections. A web, not a maelstrom, a web.
I realized during my recent book tour that I love living life on a human scale, on a scale of one-to-one-to-one.
In 2011, the community I want to create is one that gathers the potency and energy and love I see online in support of a mission. I am convinced we can change the world with love.
