Sunday, February 11, 2007

Sunday Food for Thought: Communities

Spurred on by a discussion about what communities are and how they work over at Everybody Comes From Somewhere, I thought I'd do see free form rambling.

As a person who studies buddhist philosophy, I understand the idea that desires (and needs and attachments) cause suffering. Freeing yourself from those things is quite another thing though. Just as I can choose to pin my hopes or even my future (short or long term) on any one thing in life - a relationship, a job, a goal, an experience - I can also choose to live in this moment for what it is - walking away from my expectations or perceptions that do might me to suffer in the end. I have that choice. When I become attached to any person, place or thing, I give up the freedom I need internally to secure my peace of mind.

Communities in our lives are ever-changing. Nothing is stagnant. If I stubbornly hold on to yesterday's perception of whichever community I'm a part of, online or offline, I'll simply find myself in a continual uphill struggle to somehow reclaim yesterday - wanting and needing today to be the same - an impossible feat. Why would I want that? That type of attachment stems from fear of change and insecurity about how to cope with a new dynamic or reality.

It's my job then to see my communities as they are - that state of "being" - and to contribute to what they are becoming rather than trying to pull them back into some mold I may have decided was the most comfortable. Comfort, in that sense, is simply the refusal to move ahead. As one motivational speaker whom I heard speak long ago said: it's a matter of hitting the wall and instead of turning left (to a new direction) simply decorating the place with some new furniture while you plant yourself there as the rest of your community - and life - moves on without you. It's an attachment to inertia as you bludgeon your spirit into complacency.

Since all we really have are our perceptions then, perhaps we need to have a look at the community that is our thoughts as a starting place to functioning in communities outside of ourselves - in the so-called 'real' world. Our thoughts (and emotions) are not our masters unless we allow them to be. We are not required to hold on to any one thought about anything for any length of time and we are at our best, in my opinion, when we continually challenge what we think we know to be 'reality'. Becoming too attached to misperceptions and prejudices is too common a disease in society and that attachment has caused such intense suffering that the need to expose it is the common cause those of us who do not seek that stifling form of 'comfort' - that fealty to the status quo and rigid thinking.

So, for communities to 'work', the members must be willing to let them grow and develop while reflecting on how they contribute or conflict with their progress. No easy task and not a smooth ride. But we all do have a choice about how we participate, just as we have mastery over our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Our communities become who we are and the only thing we can control is our role in them. Whether we choose to suffer is up to us.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
- M. Kathleen Casey

As I commented over at Everybody Comes From Somewhere:

Commune.
Community.
Communicate.

The last of which is the essential piece.

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