Not for the Thin Skinned

by Raven

Something a bit sad to me is that I know several former community members who now live by themselves.

Living with others in community, especially in the intensity of an income sharing community, is not easy.  Until recently, one of the fastest growing forms of community was cohousing, which I sometimes refer to as community lite.  (I think the fastest growing form now is ‘coliving’ which I will admit I don’t understand.)  Cohousing gives the most privacy and least interaction of any of the forms of community I know, but it was a cohousing activist, Zev Paiss, who supposedly said, “Community–the longest, most expensive, personal growth workshop you will ever take!”

I have heard the story (which may not be true) that Arab traders would get raw gems from somewhere in Africa and carry them around on their camels in saddlebags for a year or more.  During that time, the rough gems would be thrown against each other, and rub up against each other, and knock pieces off one another, and at the end of that time, they would be polished stones.

Rough stones

It’s an analogy for the difficult and sometimes painful process of living together.  We polish each other, and often become better people in the process–but it’s not easy.  Trauma complicates the process.  If you have a lot of trauma, community living is going to be very rough–for you and everyone else.  Living with people quite different from you is going to “ push your buttons” all the time.  In community, I often feel like I have my stuff in my face, as I see how I interact in ways I don’t like. As someone I once knew said, it’s “another *#%$@* growth experience.”

Of course, there are a lot of wonderful things about living in community.  I don’t do it to become a better person.  I do it because I love the engagement and connection and sharing and caring and mutual support.  But I don’t want to downplay the difficulties.  Community living isn’t easy and it’s not all holding hands and singing.  As my title suggests, it’s not for the thin skinned.  But if you want to grow thicker skin and find wonderful (if not easy) ways of being with others, community has a lot to teach.

Literal thick and thin skin

Something I’ve often thought about is, if humans (and even our primate ancestors) lived in tribes for millenia, why is community experience so hard for us now?

I will write about this next week.