Building Community/Asking for Help

Here's a rambling blog post about how I suck at building community. And how I break my neck to do things on my own instead of asking for help.

I didn't realize this was an issue until about my mid-20s when I was in Peace Corps. Through a lot of self-reflection and journal writing, I realized my priorities were messed up.  Interpersonal relationships are more important than your professional career. (Ok, that doesn't seem like a groundbreaking idea, but back then I was too future-oriented and didn't stop and smell the roses and make friends and do silly things and all that jazz.) When I first arrived in Panama, I thought it was silly for everyone in my community to be confused about why I moved there alone when the rest of my family was in North and South Carolina. While I regret absolutely nothing about moving to Panama and would do it again in a heartbeat--THEY HAVE A FUCKING GOOD POINT. Why didn't I think twice about leaving behind friends, family and community in the States? Why was I not moving back to Charlotte to re-establish myself there?

Before my Peace Corps experience, I was a little too "logical" in deciding how to spend my time. The mantra was to stay in school and make good grades in order to be somebody--and to be honest, that kind of mindset is necessary when you're coming from a place where the cards are stacked against you, in a city where social mobility is notoriously low. That being said, taking the straight and narrow 100% of the time will have you missing out on the vibrant experiences you'd have if you'd sacrifice just a little efficiency and take the scenic route once in awhile.  The scenic route is more fun, and if quality of life and enjoyment is what we're supposedly working so hard to achieve anyway, is that really putting you off the path toward your goals? In any case, now that I'm older,  have a fancy Ivy-league master's degree and am starting to build a little financial security, I can afford to relax a bit and try and put that thought into practice. (ONLY I MISSED THE PART WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND DATE AND STUFF.)

But I digress.  Moving on--I think it's the culmination of a bunch of small, otherwise inconsequential interactions that create community. Two days ago a colleague gave me some of the lasagna she made so I'd have some for dinner.  I'm moving soon and she knew my cookware was packed up and shipped out already and I couldn't whip up a meal for myself.  I wouldn't have starved without the lasagna (we have Uber Eats here), but it was incredibly kind of her to feed me.  Sometimes I consider doing small thoughtful things like that, but I never follow through and instead continue with my regularly scheduled life. I'm only there for the big things or the heavy lifting. In my professional life I'm on it and pulling my weight on the team because stuff needs to get done.  On a personal level, if someone needs a ride to the store, medicine when they're sick or help moving, I'm there for that. If someone's having a bad day, though, I'm probably not the person that's going to unsolicitedly get them a cookie to make it better or grab them a lunch from across the street.  I just don't get down to that granular level of being attentive to other people's needs (unless it's like my sister or one of my closest friends). If I could do that, make a little small talk, go out of my way a bit to show people I'm open to being friends, maybe it'd help me with my sense of community. I'd have to inconvenience myself a little more and stop worrying about getting thrown off of my own schedule for the day.

A combination of my tendency toward self preservation, general suspicion of other people's motives and awkwardness about asking for help have combined to make it suck for me in terms of trying to build real friendships with people around me.  Here are some examples:

• Moving from Princeton to D.C. -- When I finished grad school and needed to move all of my stuff out of my Princeton apartment, I didn't feel comfortable asking anyone for help. All my classmates were moving out in a similar time frame and my family was far away, so rather than finding someone to help, I rented a U-Haul, loaded all my stuff into it by myself (including my furniture) and drove it down to North Carolina overnight. Before moving, I didn't tell anyone except my sister that this was the plan.

• Ebony asking her roommate to pick her up from the doctor's office. -- My sister has this issue too, so I'm gonna use her example of the time it about killed her to have to ask her roommate to pick her up from the doctor's office when she had to get knocked out at the dentist.

• Ebony saying "I'll be fine" when she's LITERALLY in the hospital hopped up on three different opioids and her arm broken in three places. -- Yea that happened. I was with her on the phone asking her if she wanted me to fly my dad up there (which is not a huge inconvenience for me or my dad especially given the circumstances) and her response was "it's okay, I'll be fine". Uh, no you won't. You just got a metal rod put in your arm.

ALSO last year I read this book called Second Mountain and I don't know if I was reading it or it was reading me tbh. It kind of scolded Western society for how we don't know how to build community anymore.  Here a couple of points:

• When you don't build community, life can feel shapeless. -- I have a love-hate relationship with the "choose your own adventure" style of life, but I can't go back in the cave now, I'm already out here, cat's out of the bag. But I definitely see the appeal of following tradition. At least in that case your life has a purpose that you didn't even have to think up yourself. It was prescribed for you and you already have the rule book laid out for ya.

• Kids who do well in school tend to go for jobs that have competitive hiring mechanisms. -- This has nothing to do with building community, but ugggh how do I get out of this trap.  I don't know any other way to live.  I wanna color outside the lines a little bit but I don't know how.

End Rambling. You may now return to your regularly scheduled life.