On community

"Life imitates art more than art imitates life." - Oscar Wilde

Friends, we live in a fascinating world. Sometimes, it seems to me that there is an underlying structure ordering our lives. For me, that structure is largely composed of parallel lines: one line representing my scientific research, the other representing my personal experiences. The two seem eerily parallel at times. 

I am a community ecologist. I spent my PhD years studying communities of animals to figure out how they were structured. What species lived best together, which ones preferred to be apart. Meanwhile, I moved across the ocean three different times, planting myself in a new culture each time. My experience reflected my scientific work: I was conducting a personal experiment in community assembly. 

For my postdoc, I shifted my focus to an earlier stage of invertebrate life-cycles. I worked on larval settlement while simultaneously settling down myself. My trans-continental wanderings led me to my forever home. All the while, my research on recruitment revealed how invertebrates choose their forever homes. 

Over the years, I have thought a lot about communities - why some are tight while others are superficial. What binds people together to start a community, and what keeps a good community going. I have made observations and written notes. I have boiled down my theories to four key elements that define any good community: (1) everyone is accepted for exactly who they are, even if who they are changes; (2) participation is voluntary; (3) there is some unifying interest or circumstance, but there is no strong central leader; (4) members make active investments in one another. 

Every theory must be put to the test, and for me, living on Cape Cod has been that test. For whatever reason, there is very little sense of community here. People mostly keep to themselves or are chronically "too busy" to spend time together. Maybe my experience is a by-product of my life stage (middle-aged childless career woman) rather than geographic location, but still. Living on Cape Cod has challenged me to apply my theory, take initiative, and form a strong community. 

The first two elements have been easy to implement. In my house, everyone is accepted for exactly who they are - that's our baseline. Participation is absolutely voluntary, as dinner invitations can be declined without consequence. Criteria 3 and 4 have been harder. Woods Hole is a small town with multiple large research institutions, so science is definitely a common interest for many. While science can be an incredible unifier, I have to be careful that I don't end up just spending time with colleagues and talking about work - that's overtime, not community. My husband and I have used his love of cooking and everyone's love of our dog, Kraken, as other unifying elements. On a monthly basis, we host themed dinner parties, addressing invitations to "Kraken's friends." The dinner parties have generated some momentum, but there's still work to do. 

The fourth element - active investment - is the hardest. This idea is what brought me to my keyboard today. You see, after work, I had plans to attend a cooking class with a friend. But then she got a call - a mutual friend's dog was ill. We pivoted immediately and rushed to the vet. As disappointing as it was to miss the class I was excited about, there was exactly one thought in my mind as we comforted our friend and her pup: "This is what living in community looks like."

Six years ago, it was a pot of baked ziti brought to my front door as my husband was recovering from surgery. Last summer, it was a panicked Friday evening phone call that had me rescuing a lost buoy from a local beach in the dark. Two months ago, it was my husband's snowblower digging out every one of our neighbors. Last weekend, it was an evening in the sauna gifted by a friend to help me relax. These are the active investments that have strengthened our Cape Cod community. 

May you experience a strong, deep sense of community where you live. And may our budding community here on Cape Cod continue to grow, decentralize, and proliferate.