Community

I was driving to work earlier today, thinking of the social interaction I was partaking, and how empty it was, how lonely it felt to be in my car all by myself, surrounded by tons of people in other cars, who I couldn't say hi to and smile at, all of us there, alone. I was reminded of this tonight, as I put on a song to listen to, how readily available music is, and while it is a beautiful thing, it is again isolating. I don't go seek out someone's company to sing with me, to make music, to hear them make music. I can just sit in my room and listen to music here by myself. I can go to the grocery store, and pick up fruits and vegetables, all shining and beautiful, go to rows and rows of packaged foods that are easy to make, try to avoid the carts that I see, but never really looking at the people around me, as I head to the self-checkout, again avoiding all social interaction, because then I don't have to make chit-chat or be silent at the checkout stand.

It is all so...convenient. And I feel suddenly that the package I have been sold is not a quick ride to work, not music anytime I want, not easy groceries. Those are the alluring bright lights that make me pick up the package and think I want it, but I feel like what it all is is packaged loneliness.

I think back to old days a lot. To what it must have been like 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 1000 years ago. I feel like they had something we don't.

It's not that there is no sense of community. I feel it when I go to my farmer's market, and talk with the people who grow the food I will eat. I feel it at church, particularly in relief society. I feel it majorly at my family reunions once a year. I felt it at a party yesterday. But I don't want to just find my community at events. I want it to hit me when I walk out my door. I want it to be convenient to talk to my neighbors, to see them and say hi. I want it to be convenient to get to know the people around me.

My freshman year of college, I lived in Deseret Towers. That small place, and then to campus, that was my world that year. It was the smallest my world had ever been. Yet it some ways, it was the largest. These people were my people. I would say hi to pretty much any person I saw. I smiled at everyone. I saw people all the time, and I came to recognize hundreds of faces that I never even learned the names of, but they were there and a part. The thing is, what mattered to me was not that I mattered to all these people. I don't know if they cared that I was there. It was that I cared that those other people were there.

So many opportunities are missed when we look inward instead of outward.