Community - It’s Everything
Over at Search-This (my other blog for web developers) I just posted about the significance of belonging to a community. Please stop there first and read that post - then return!
Here I want to talk a bit more personal about a point in my life when I felt most part of a community.
The happiest I’ve ever been in my life is when I was the poorest — when I was a college student.
I can list everything I owned in college right here:
- 386 Computer - that 386 was smoken
- Sega Genesis - Mortal Combat ruled
- Mini Fridge - salsa is all I ever had in it
- CD player and CDs
- Washburn acoustic guitar - all I could ever play was Redemption Song and some Metallica
- And some cloths
That’s all I had to my name…
But being poor never mattered, everybody there had nothing. And being poor wasn’t the part that made it the happiest of times.
What made it the best of times was that you were surrounded all day every day with people that you cared about and cared about you — friends. It was a very tribal way of living.
Everything I had my friends treated like it was theirs and likewise whatever they had they lent to the community. We all benefited from one another. When you needed a cup of milk for a recipe you never felt like you couldn’t ask your neighbor.
It’s not just about sharing — sharing is simply a result of caring about one another. But it seems like the more material possessions you have the less you are dependent on others and without dependency comes the ability to remove yourself from the community.
And I believe that is what we have today. No communities and as a result of every man being an island you have to bust your ass!
I submit that Egyptian workers, relatively speaking, got as much out of building Khufu’s pyramid as Microsoft workers will get out of building Bill Gates’s pyramid (which will surely dwarf Khufu’s a hundred times over, though it will not, of course, be built of stone).
It took Khufu twenty-three years to build his Great Pyramid at Giza, where some eleven hundred stone blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons, had to be quarried, moved, and set in place every day during the annual building season, roughly four months long. Few commentators on these facts can resist noting that this achievement is an amazing testimonial to the pharaoh’s iron control over the workers of Egypt. I submit, on the contrary, that pharaoh Khufu needed to exercise no more control over his workers at Giza than pharaoh Bill Gates exercises over his workers at Microsoft.
If I had the choice I would give up a lot of my possessions to have more free time to spend with friends, family and time relaxing. Shit - how much time do you have to just relax in a week?
I suppose I’m just ranting here?
But what’s your thoughts?
October 1st, 2007 at 3:40 pm
[…] get a little more personal and talk more about communities and my thoughts over at my personal blog here. Subscribe to this feed! Subscribe to Search-This by […]
October 4th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I agree - how cool would it be to go to College now with laptops, iPods and $4 coffee?
I actually spent an hour the other day prying a melted cassette tape out of our car stereo that had gotten stuck.
It all came home when I realized that my life would be so much better if I just threw the stinking thing away. It’s no longer with us.
Ben O.
October 4th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Hey, did I miss something?
Where is the Webpod thingy?
Did you take it off?
Ben O.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:28 am
what’s a tape
college is the best of times…
If I had an xbox360 in college I would flunk out for sure…
I must have fubared the WebPod on my last update - Ill fix it this weekend…
October 7th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
October 7th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
wow, i have been looking for a way to describe my goals for 2008 and this is pretty close. Although your post isn’t just about blogging it relates a lot to what blogging is about. Here is another thought. When i meet someone that is interesting and we have things to talk about, it gives me a great feeling. In fact, i strive to help people when i enjoy talking to them. Some people are not wired that way, in fact they only look at what they can get from you instead of trying to figure out what they can give. By giving you receive, but be careful of the takers. In fact, i will go as far to say this, I try to run my business in the same way. Giving a lot and only needing a little. Almost like I can operate at 110% efficiency. Giving out more then i am required to run - does that make any sense? I love that idea - it is a feel good way to go about life. I must admit, it has taken a good part of my life (34 now) to realize this. To me, life is about the journey and that journey is only as interesting as the people that are around you.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Reading your blog created a mental time travel and suddenly I was back in college and surrounded by friends listening to early Taj Mahal and the White Album and we were poor. If someone had a few dollars we all ate or drank or smoked and the rotation was endless. It was the late sixties and subjects from VietNam to Black Panthers were on our minds. We had created a sub family, lucky to have survived, in some cases, our first families. Some of the group went on to fame, others passed on, and some simply drifted away but the days of lean means were the best because as you begin to create success and money becomes more fluid you can find yourself isolated. I would trade the comfort for one more day of sitting together with my old friends…if only I had known that then. You are absolutely correct when you say life is about the journey, not the destination.