Come Together...Right Now

The Beatles were onto something with that idea. Coming together as a community, for a common good or a shared goal, creates benefits that go beyond the efforts extended by the group. Feeling a sense of belonging, of having a "tribe" helps us feel less isolated, lowers anxiety and stress, and provides a sense of identity and purpose. Community can be found anywhere; indeed, expanding our definition of community allows us a more unique and broader menu of opportunities to connect with our fellow travelers on this planet. Some communities are more formal and structured, requiring dues or membership, like a union, a sorority or the health club. Others orbit around a shared interest, like a book club or knitting circle, and others around a shared purpose, including a church's lay ministry team or a group of Meals on Wheels volunteers. Even our workplace can be a place of community, despite it's potential politics and perhaps "bottom-line" mentality. Who recalls the early days of their working life, when the "newbies," often the younger folks in an organization, would regularly meet for beers after work to offer each other support and attempt to navigate through the confusing, overwhelming and sometimes frightening new world of corporate America? Feeling like other people "get" our experience helps us feel known and seen, and therefore more empowered in our lives. Now, I'm the last person you'll see at a PTA meeting, and my job is draining enough that I often balk at opportunities to volunteer that require more than writing a check. But I find myself smiling more through my workout after I use a few minutes pre-elliptical machine to chat with Joe and Bob, two 70-ish retirees who frequent the park district gym the same hours I do. Bob will fill me in on his grandkids' latest sports achievements, and Joe will gently rib me about STILL not following up with his financial advisor to ensure my retirement is well-funded.("You'll be us before you know it!" he says, curling s thumb in his and Bob's direction. "Hopefully with more hair!" I tease back, nodding at their bald pates.) I never see these men anywhere but the gym, despite our shared commitment to some level of fitness and the likelihood that we live in the same town and drive the same streets. But instances like these are potent reminders of how small, seemingly inconsequential connections can bring a sense of "sharedness", of how intertwined our lives truly are, if only we adopt the lens to SEE them that way. This is an age of Skyping and IM-ing, of quick tweets replacing long chats. Still, if we choose to open our eyes to the ways walking through the same door as another can highlight our "sameness", we can recognize that we are never really very far apart at all. The Fab Four were truly sages before their time.