Community

My last post on the great holiday of temporary community, Halloween, started me thinking about individualism and communities in my own life. The great French classical philosopher Pascal said “Le moi est haissable” (basically, “The ego is destable/obnoxious). I thought about this quote during my Sunday morning routine: reading the local newspaper, going to church with my family and eating brunch with my father at one of our favorite local restaurants. Shopping and church are the activities that I use most often to form my own communities.


En feuilletant (while browsing)the Christmas ads, my father reminisced about how my sister and I used to circle our desired objects when we were younger and more openly with our greed. But it went beyond the Target circular – the JCPenny’s Christmas catalogue was a tome to be reckoned with. Dolls, keyboards, computer games, soccer balls. I remember bundling up in my thick winter coat and going to the customer service desk at our local mall for late December pickups. Now that I’m a bit more raffiné (refined) as well as connected to technology, shopping is one of the few experiences that forces me to leave the comfort of my own home and interact with the wider community. Last year in France, I got to know a few of the street vendors at the Marché de Noël and was excited to see students and colleagues in a different setting. Markets in Host Country are intense affairs with complex negotiations and a strong reliance on social trust. Plus, FedEx Ground has yet to take off.

L’Église fulfills my need for interaction in a different way. In a global sense, I feel connected to so many other Catholics around the world when I go to Sunday Mass. It gives me great comfort when abroad to know that my family in Kansas will recite many of the same prayers, struggle with the same problems and sing many of the same hymns as I do seven hours before them. On a local level, we also share la paix du Christ with each other before taking Communion. Shaking the hand of a fellow human being creates an instant connection whose power is magnified when one feels adrift and alone. Watching the same faces process towards the altar each week to receive la hostie creates a sense of familiarity.

But these activities alone are not enough. As social critic Robert Putnam argues in “Bowling Alone,” Americans have become a more intensely individualistic nation over the past few decades. There are some definite benefits to focusing on the individual (self-satisfaction, empowerment, seeing nuances rather than groups) but disadvantages as well. Polite greetings and smiles of recognition are great but cannot take the place of genuine human caring and interaction. To saluer someone properly in Host Country takes a few minutes of sustained conversation and contact. We are encouraged to get to know our neighbors on a deeper level than “Heya Bob, great weather, eh?” This has never been easy for me and as my friend Valerie writes at Exit Anytime, putting oneself out there for recognition and display can be profoundly uncomfortable. But as caterpillars must endure the chrysalis to become butterflies so too must I find my own critical point to begin metamorphosis.