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Community Building Through Shared Living

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I’ve been living with room- and housemates ever since heading off to college over a decade ago (and since birth, if you count family), and I feel like I’m starting to figure out what makes it work. I’ve never lived alone, and although I’m sure that has lots of its own merits, I love having roommates and the energy that comes along with that. I also haven’t lived in a true commune-type situation, so most of this applies to having fewer than four or five in the house. Here are some tips, tricks, and fun ways to approach the experience of shared living.

Intention. The biggest part of creating a positive living experience and a sense of community is having the shared intention to do so. Simple in theory, but harder to find in practice. There has to be buy-in from all the housemates in order to create a community rather than just a bunch of separate rooms connected by a hallway or kitchen. A great way to facilitate this is with some kind of founding document or manifesto for the house. Write out the intentions you all have and post it as a reminder. This has gradually evolved at my house, and we currently have a list of “Top Priorities”:

  • Meet new people
  • Experience new things
  • Be mobile
  • Don’t hold back
  • Be generous
  • Practice gratitude

This is a great lead-in to important thing #2:

Communication. Let’s be honest. Having great roommates is like being in a relationship. Communication is key, and without it things are going to get weird and uncomfortable pretty quickly. Face-to-face meetings and check-ins (about both house stuff and personal stuff) are the best, but technology can help fill the gaps. House spreadsheets for chores or purchases, group text messages for random updates and silliness, message boards, inspiration boards, quote boards, the whole shebang. A great way to improve communication is to get rid of the internet at home. It can be hard, but it’s worth it. When I was working full-time, an occasional long email to the house as a life update would go a long way toward starting necessary conversations and talking about difficult things.

Shared Experience. Your roommates don’t have to be your best friends, but everything is more fun when they are good friends, or when there is openness to becoming good friends. Sharing experiences is a great way to do this, and one of the ways I bond most quickly. Cooking together is an excellent start, and as the house develops, sharing bulk grocery shopping and having parties/game nights/potlucks can be wonderful. Less routine adventures are the best for creating long-term shared memories. Road trips, bike tours around unfamiliar neighborhoods, shopping at Goodwill, hosting yard sales, going out dancing, construction/art/craft projects, hosting guests/couchsurfers, whatever you all enjoy but don’t get to do that much.

Being Open. Everything is not going to be perfect all the time, but things will be much smoother if everyone is willing to step a bit out of their comfort zone occasionally and let the house do things in a way they normally wouldn’t do it themselves. Have conversations about new things, be flexible. Try to see the situation from your roommate’s perspective; take a step into their world view to expand your own.

POSITIVITY! This is a life skill, not just for shared housing. A big way it translates into a living situation, though, is through generosity. Everyone is going to owe everyone else a few dollars at some point, and if one person is consistently getting the short or long end of the stick, it’s probably time for a conversation. When cooking or baking, it’s best to make enough for everyone even if they don’t ask or aren’t home. If two of the housemates are better friends, that doesn’t need to lead to the exclusion of others. Basically, play together and be silly. Create house rules and a “sin jar” for breaking them. Make unusual traditions and inside jokes. Be creative and cherish the fact that everyone is going through the same struggles in life as you. Be grateful that you have wonderful people to live with, and give them the same respect you want to see from them.

Oh, and do as many dishes as you can stand to do, as often as possible.

Bold colors, drips

Openness and Play

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After a very brief bit of soul-searching, I decided a few weeks ago to take a job leading backpacking trips for the YMCA in Seattle this summer. The training we’ve done for the program, along with a bit of traveling and an epic frisbee tournament, has got me thinking a lot about relationships, communication, openness, and play. Mostly about how wonderful all those things are, and how little emphasis we put on them in everyday life.

The backpacking training came first, and it was hands-down the best orientation I’ve ever had for a job. We basically went out into the woods and mirrored the experience we would be facilitating for our participants later in the summer. We spent five days building groups, playing games, talking about emotional intelligence and generally having an awesome time. There were about fifty to-be instructors, and every single one was down to create a fun environment and get real with some pretty deep and important conversations. By the end of the five days, the incredibly supportive environment had allowed us all to bond together as if we’d been friends for years. And I’m pretty sure I will be friends with some of those folks for years to come.

I went straight from the orientation to Boston and then Vermont to visit family, especially my three-month old niece. We had a really great time making eye contact and sticking our tongues out at each other and napping. A different kind of bonding, but maybe only in the sense that it’s broken down to its essentials and not yet cluttered by all sorts of baggage and language and anxieties. I also had some really good time to hang out with slightly older relatives and friends, which reminded me again of the difficulties of choosing a coast. For the moment I’m still sticking with the west, though.

Two weeks in New England and I flew back to Seattle in time to go rock climbing in Squamish, British Columbia for a couple days (Side note: holy crap. This place is amazing. A climbing dreamland.) before heading to the biggest and best and silliest frisbee tournament in the country, Potlatch. I’ve been to Potlatch about seven times, and it never ceases to amaze me. There is such an incredible wealth of goofing around and great costumes and old friends and new friends and dance parties and bagels with peanut butter. It is not unusual to call a time-out for the sole purpose of setting up a slip-and-slide or having a picnic on the field. Team bonding and community building happens quickly and effortlessly.

But now I am back in “Real Life”, where people do not spontaneously burst into song or dance or wear face and body paint or play games where you make animal noises because you need a let off some steam. The world here seems to run on different energy, or with different priorities. There is a little bit more sarcasm, and people have thick skin. I’m not necessarily pushing for costumed-silliness 24/7, but I think there are some important values that these experiences highlight, and which are often overlooked in our day-to-day routines. Play is big one. Being open, authentic, and real is another. Being supportive and silly in a group, being honest about fears and dreams. These activities may only appear to be passing moments pasted into a larger reality, just vacations we take to “get away”. But they are actually the things that allow us to create strong bonds of friendship and love, and those are the things that really matter. All the physical stuff we acquire along the way is not the point, and I think in a lot of instances it actually makes it more difficult to build relationships and community.

The frisbee community and the outdoor community are groups that are serious about having a good time, making cool things happen, and building strong relationships. It takes love and generosity and openness to create a space for all that to take place, but it is one-hundred percent worth it. These are the things that make life so precious, rewarding, and fun, and I think we could all use a little bit more of that in our day-to-day lives.

Meditate with Max!

Neuroscience, Society

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A lot of the reading I’ve done lately has focused on neuroscience, taking a systematic look at how the brain works best. In many cases, this reinforces our intuition about human interaction. Often, it surprises us. More and more, these readings are highlighting for me areas where our society is at odds with how humans have always functioned and how we function the best. I’m not a neuroscientist (except, aren’t we all?), but here is what I’ve been able to put together.

On a fundamental level, we’re finding that the most important part of life in terms of cultivating happiness and fulfillment is our social engagement. It is a healthy functioning limbic brain (the emotional system common to all mammals) rather than reptilian (reflexes, instincts) or neocortical (higher cognition) that allows humans to flourish in society and not become reclusive, depressed, or psychotic. The limbic system is largely cultivated through close relationships, especially during childhood, but later in life as well. It sounds corny, but the word we’re looking for here is love. Parental love allows our brains to develop properly as infants, love from our teachers helps us learn in school, and love from a partner allows us to deal with difficulties throughout life. This is a wonderful thing to know and be able to put into action, but it’s a devastating lens through which to view our society. Here are a few areas that could be vastly improved by acknowledging the human need for love.

Technology

I’ve written about some of my qualms with the internet before, but this one is getting worse. We continue to replace our face-to-face interactions with screen time. Our emotional brains resonate through subtle cues in body language, eye contact, and touch which cannot be mimicked by text messages, email, or Facebook. All this technology gives us the sense of being connected to people, but without any of the deep emotional bonds that goes with it. Instead, we get a quick dopamine fix from the constant stimulation and fall in love with our phones instead of our friends. Have you tried saying hello to strangers on the street lately? It’s nearly impossible.

Welfare

Our society encourages parents to get back to work as soon as possible once they have kids, even though spending time with their children is the most important thing they can do for their kids and for society at large. It forces single parents to hold down full time jobs while paying for child care, which is no substitute for building the emotional bonds between a parent and child. Even maternity leave (and the occasional paternity leave) considered to be “generous” barely scratches the surface for a child’s emotional development. Combined with the stigma against full-time parenting, we’re churning out generations of emotionally-deficient youth.

Education

Kids learn the best when they have a strong connection with their teacher, and when their teacher is able to devote attention to the child’s needs and progress. Huge classes, teaching to the test, and low teacher salaries all restrict the strength of these bonds and reduce the effectiveness of our education system. Instead, we’re buying bombers and drones which aren’t making anyone happy, except maybe the executives at Lockheed Martin.

Food

Even our food system is suffering from a lack of emotional resonance. The food we buy is so packaged, processed, and reconstituted, that it’s often impossible to know what we’re eating. Eating, and especially eating in groups, is one of the most basic human interactions. As our food loses value, so does the meal itself. Factory farms would not exist if we maintained our emotional connection to the animals we raised for food. We are meant to look into the eyes of the cow that will become our beef and feel a sense of gratitude, gain an understanding of our place in the world. Why put time into preparing and sharing something so synthetic as what we call food today?

Business

Money will not make you happy. Studies are showing that once basic needs are met, more money does not equate to more happiness. We love to measure things, but GDP does not relate to the quality of a nation. Our society is awash in consumerism and the idea that more stuff is better. This is a devastating perspective, and will only lead to more greed and envy.

Health

It seems that doctors no longer have the luxury of actually spending time with their patients. Insurance companies ensure that these interactions are brief, and focus solely on the disease, not the person. It turns out we’re complicated organisms and much of the healing we’re capable of is powered by our emotions. Those who have good insurance might get coverage for a few therapy sessions, but therapy is meant to work gradually over several years. Considering how hard it is to even get decent insurance, we’re pretty much begging for illness and depression.

Justice

It seems like Republicans want more incarceration, Democrats want more treatment programs, but nobody wants to deal with the weak family structure that is so often the root of crime and drug addiction. This goes back to the welfare system. If we put more resources into allowing families to form strong bonds, our whole society would be stronger and less reliant on criminal justice to keep order.

Government

My thoughts on this one have been sequestered until further notice.

So, things are pretty bleak. Perhaps as awareness grows of how our brains work and what makes us happy, our society will begin to shift. Living in the bubble that is Seattle, it’s easy to feel like maybe things aren’t so bad. But in thinking about the country as a whole, I’m pretty sure they are.

Internet at Home

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I just got back from a 10-day road trip around southern California, which was fantastic. A good mix of visiting with old friends, making new ones, and wandering alone through the desert. The twist: I lost my phone on the beach in Santa Monica on about day 4 (apologies if you’ve been trying to reach me. Email is the only way for the time being, and I didn’t get your message). So far this has been pretty fun and interesting, and I’ve generally been glad to not have something always ready to vibrate in my pocket and pull me away from the present (although approaching an unfamiliar city with no way of contacting the people I’m supposed to be meeting is admittedly somewhat stressful). But more than anything, it has got me thinking about communication in general, how we interact in this world of WiFi and smartphones and text messages and Skype &c &c &c.

There are books to be written about all this communication (they probably already have been), but I just want to focus on one thing: internet at home. Having internet at home is pervasive and expected and apparently innocuous. A lot of the time, really helpful. But here’s what I’m going to suggest: life is better without it.

I live with two roommates in an apartment in Seattle, and when we all moved in together last May we decided to forgo an internet connection. We were all curious about what that would do, and were happy to save a few bucks in the process.

A few of the consequences of an internet-free house were as I had expected. I spend less time surfing the web, which is pretty much synonymous with wasting time. I read more, cook more, play music more, and hang out more than I did when I had the internet. Pretty obvious. I only check my email for one block of time each day (this can vary depending on work situation – right now I’m never in an office), which has reduced my stress enormously and caused me to miss approximately zero important events and messages.

The things I didn’t expect, however, have turned out to be much more important.

Thing one: sleep. I sleep so much better when I don’t look at my computer before bed. Finding an important email right before bed when there is nothing I can do about it only makes sleep more difficult. It drifts through my mind, waking me up and causing me to stew on the response/intention/miscommunication held within. These things are meant to be dealt with during the daytime. A clear mind at night leads to a restful, dream-filled sleep.

Thing two, and this is the one that I feel is the most important and subtle: community. This one has been floating around my mind for a while, but didn’t gel until a friend on the road trip commented on it explicitly while I was describing my house. Here’s a typical scene in a house with roommates: somebody is hanging out in the kitchen, maybe making some food with a friend. Someone else is sitting on the couch in the living room, absorbed by his computer but present enough to maybe throw something into the conversation when he hears some keyword or is addressed specifically. This works and seems functional, but it sucks. What’s missing is the most valuable resource we have to offer: attention. This guy’s attention is on his computer, so although he is physically there, and therefore satisfying some emotional want or need, none of the relationships are growing from the interaction. With the internet, I do this all the time without even thinking about it. It’s an addiction, and it’s too powerful to avoid by simply trying to not use the computer at certain times. TV, I realize, does a similar thing, but I haven’t had a TV for anything but movies in years, so I sometimes forget what it’s like.

Without the crutch of easy attention-absorption, everyone in the room is present and accounted for, able to fully invest their focus in the conversation and the subtle emotional cues that come with any face-to-face interaction. This just isn’t possible if someone is staring blankly at a screen. This level of engagement has helped our house build a sense of community and strengthened the communication that takes place there. Of course, it helps that my roommates and our guests are people with whom I do want to build community, and that I love to go to coffee shops for internet-centric things like posting blogs, and that both of my roommates have smartphones for emergency/last minute email sending. But it’s the routine, rather than the exceptions, that makes the difference.

Our parents were right when they told us to turn off the TV during dinner, but nobody is going to tell us to turn off the internet. I’m glad I did.