longing for community
and belonging
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it really means to belong. Not just having friends, but being part of something that understands you.
How do you define community and what is the function of community?
When we talk about community, we usually mean a group of people who just ‘get’ each other – who share passions, values, or a way of seeing the world.
Every community has different functions and purposes. The only community that I am sort of involved in is Substack.
The Substack community is filled with readers and writers. In general, people love to read or write regardless of genres. At least within the community that I am aware of, people love arts, literature, and pop culture.
We are always longing for community. We are always looking for like minded people.
The biggest reason we yearn for a sense of kinship is we feel isolated. The society that we live in encourages individualism – you do everything alone – completing exams, hitting sales targets, getting food etc.
In ancient times, people were born in the community and they did everything together. They hunted animals, built shelters, made art together, as a community.
There was no competition, it was all about getting things done in a group and helping each other out. There was togetherness.
Another reason is we often make friends in school and work settings. Most of the time, we do not even have anything in common. In my case, my friends from school and work and I are very different, we have different hobbies and interests.
We sometimes treat these friendships like status updates – we just let each other know what major thing happened in our lives and probably reminisce about what happened back then, that is it.
Friendships like this often drift apart easily. The older we are, the harder it is to get friends and maintain friendships.
Hence, I (probably you too) “thirst” for community. I was, and perhaps still am, looking for that community.
The community where I can express myself freely.
The community where I can talk about my hobbies, my interests – not just boyfriends and gossip.
The community where I can have healthy friendships with like minded people.
I am very grateful for the Substack community – where I can write creatively. People drop heartfelt messages and comments occasionally and I love it.
Here, I don’t feel like an outcast. And, people get me!
I’m not saying all of us are alike here, we are still very different individuals with different day jobs and occupations, and we probably write for different purposes.
But, we share the same love for writing, literature, arts etc. We are here together because of our communal love for them.
I also love Substack in a sense that – there’s no competition and jealousy. Just us cheering for each other’s success and wishing each other the best in this writing journey.
It’s very different from the communities I’ve been involved in the past. There is no toxicity, no dragging each other down, just love and acceptance.
I love Substack. And I am very thankful that people read my work and they love it. It is the greatest feeling ever.
Maybe that’s the real magic of Substack – that strangers can find each other through words, and somewhere in the exchange of stories, we start to feel less alone.