My relationship with time and space and other humans has certainly been scrambled during the last four years, and it’s a refrain I’m hearing from so many of my fellows. Going out feels hard or sad or energetically expensive. Staying in feels heavy on the FOMO, with a Peloton and the Netflix Pacifier. Camaraderie is absent, unless it’s in short videos or thumb texts or emojis.
In our conversation a week ago, those aboard the Holding Space Ship and I chatted about this thing, and the near extinction of opportunities to be alone together. Coffee shops where you’re a regular - not just among the staff, but among the patrons. Sing-a-longs in service of a faith practice or celebration. Grown up, PG-rated play dates without axe throwing or putt putting.
Some of it is the economy, but much of it is the ecosystem.
Where and how are we supposed to ‘bump elbows’ with one another when our phones are in our hands and our AirPods are in our ears? Tuesday this week I gathered with two students (and an associated toddler) in my entirely online, asynchronous microbiology course who happen to live in my major metro. We triangulated a coffee shop which advertises not only coffee, but conversation spaces, and when I arrived I introduced myself to six or so individual humans who might be 20 something pre-pharm students aka the only people who were not engrossed in their own laptops cancelling the sound around them at the ‘community’ table. Everything on the menu cost $8 which must have included some sort of ass-tax, as in, how to pay for the seat you’ll be using for the next hour or so while caffeinating. Two hours? How ‘bout a pastry?
We sat outside in an abundant and vacant patio even though it was slightly colder than was reasonable and chatted about how we came to be in microbiology. I learned a bit more about the path-to-pharm and watched a gleeful three year old devour an $8 pastry and then run in laps and loops and circles. Up and down the boardwalk, behind and among imaginary fellows. The microbiologist’s paths were unique in origin and also in destination, but there is enough overlap to share a morning coffee and enough individual insight that we each now have a buddy who knows more about chemistry or biochemistry or genetics as we meander the subject matter of organisms (the microbes) who forge community as a matter of survival.
No smart phones were involved.
After an hour, the construction crew nearby told us they were about to make outdoor patio coffee dates miserable with some jackhammering and leaf blowing, and so we all went our separate ways with an idea that we might reconvene at the conclusion of this course.
Did I get anything? Did I give anything?
These are questions for the economist.
Our exchanges were not transactional in the sense that I offered genetics tutoring or requested support in chemistry. None of that unfolded. I suppose you could say I got this story, or perspective, along with a delicious if wildly over-priced latte, and offered the solidarity for a mama that it’s totally fine to bring a three year old and that we can both converse and alloparent simultaneously. No apologies needed.
I’m neither an economist nor an ecologist, I’m an anthropologist and a writer. An observer and often an outsider who witnesses our human weirdness. A person who has somehow forged communities that endure beyond me.
Here are some ways to suck at community
Adhere strictly to economic metrics of exchange.
Professional support is amazing and useful and essential in many areas of life - nice to have an accountant and a therapist and a plumber with training and experience and ethical guidelines. HOWEVER - if you are languishing in the realm of only having willingness to receive support under the guise of a contractual agreement and the exchange of dollars, you are missing out on the opportunity to receive friendship and mentorship. I understand why. It’s bigger than this bullet point.
Give give give and never once consider what you need. Or want. Or might prefer.
I think many of us have some adorable internalized belief (maybe based on legitimate lived experience) that if we receive anything at all, we will have signed an invisible contract, and that the giver can call our line of credit at any moment. While this may (have) be(en) true for you in a small handful of formative relationships (therapy!), in casual conversation with folks I often hear that even those without direct experience of this operate under this mode of thinking. Well shoot. Nothing to debrief in therapy then, just an invite to chuckle at adorableness and start to operate differently. By knowing even vaguely what you might want.
Do it all yourself. Tell yourself there is no one else who could help you.
There are absolutely zero points available for being a hard ass on yourself. No gold stars. If asking for support feels icky or shamey, ok. Maybe do it anyway? Maybe don’t ask your neighbor for 40 hours of uncompensated child care every week until they are in college, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tell them what you’re looking for. Like occasional childcare. Even if it isn’t a direct ask, it’s just practice saying “I could really use an hour or two of childcare once a week. I think that would give me the freedom to go to a pilates class or meander through a bookstore or dispose of some of the bodies piling up in the backyard… would you let me know if you know of anyone with this sort of offer?”
BONUS: Make yourself entirely unapproachable. Avoid eye contact. Mitigate sound. Cast wary and horrified glances at the 43 year old weirdo asking if you’re a microbiology student.
Or maybe - maybe? - practice your elbow bumping skills. Endeavor to practice facilitating minor, intentional interactions at the coffee shop or the post office or the airport. Go out on a limb and introduce yourself to someone. Practice acknowledgement when someone so brave and bold (and lonely) reaches out to you, to ask if a seat is taken, or if you’re also traveling to Seattle. You don’t need to share more than you’ve got and explain your long and torrid fear of flying, or foster a new BFF, you can answer in such a way that sees the other human, offers a morsel of humanity, and does not invite more.
I call this Holding Space. It’s one version of holding space. It’s one thing we can do.
Even if your calendar is as it was in 2019, my sense is that you’re not as you were. That there is a melancholy or unnamable weight that follows you, drives you to over schedule, or cancel and languish on the lifeboat of the couch, or navigate life with a mediocre podcast blasting through your ears.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe it’s just me.
(But I don’t think so).
Anyway, thanks for reading.
PS: Tomorrow we sail again, on the Holding Space Ship. If you’re drawn to discuss this very thing - A Better Relational Ecosystem - you’re invited.