Community

The following excerpt found it's way into my Blog reader from Kate says.

Here is an excerpt from the commencement address delivered by Barbara Kingsolver at Duke University this past weekend.

"As you leave here, remember what you loved most in this place. Not Orgo 2, I’m guessing, or the crazed squirrels or even the bulk cereal in the Freshman Marketplace. I mean the way you lived, in close and continuous contact. This is an ancient human social construct that once was common in this land. We called it a community. We lived among our villagers, depending on them for what we needed. If we had a problem, we did not discuss it over the phone with someone in Bubaneshwar. We went to a neighbor. We acquired food from farmers. We listened to music in groups, in churches or on front porches. We danced. We participated. Even when there was no money in it. Community is our native state. You play hardest for a hometown crowd. You become your best self. You know joy. This is not a guess, there is evidence. The scholars who study social well-being can put it on charts and graphs. In the last 30 years our material wealth has increased in this country, but our self-described happiness has steadily declined. Elsewhere, the people who consider themselves very happy are not in the very poorest nations, as you might guess, nor in the very richest. The winners are Mexico, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the kinds of places we identify with extended family, noisy villages, a lot of dancing. The happiest people are the ones with the most community."

I cried while reading this excerpt. Not tears of sorrow, but tears of thanks.

I recalled a conversation I'd had with my father many, many years ago. I had been rather upset about a comment my uncle had made to me. He had asked about my work and what I was going to do when I finished grad school. I talked about working in the field of cultural adjustment either in higher education or in corporate America. My uncle, Bill, commented that it sounded like work that administrative assistants do. Then he went on to talk about how sad it was that my generation would be the first generation not to exceed their parents' generation in increased wealth and standard of living (given inflation). I felt dismissed and discouraged. I then spoke with my father about this conversation. He said that Bill views wealth as money. That's the only view he has and the only definition he has for "wealth". My father said he saw wealth from a different perspective that wealth has to do with the people in your life and what their presence in your life adds to your life. He commented that he felt extremely wealthy and that so should I.

I was blessed to have grown up with a very strong sense of community, to know that there would always be someone call or depend on. Friends and family would gather to pull weeds, play volleyball, drink wine, make dinner, frame a wall, build s tone wall, dig a septic, swim in the pool, play guitar, bbq, shingle a roof, babysit, sing, mourn, celebrate, chat, dance, watch movies, eat mussels . . . . .

Quality of life vs. Quantity of things

It's important to surround yourself with good people. People are what count the most.

I'm lucky. I'm also well prepared. I know how to do things.

I learned how to cook and bake. I was learned how to sew. I was learned how to garden. I learned how to mow a lawn. I learned how to stack wood. I learned how to watch fuel economy. I learned how to balance a check book. I was learned how to reuse and recycle. I learned how to make a mistake and grow from it. I learned how to use a computer. I learned how to make ends meet. I was learned how to love.

There was no course on these things, just powerful examples.
None of it was easy and I surely bucked up against a lot of these notions. Some days I just want stuff, to buy stuff, to drive an Audi A6, and to have a lot of bathrooms, but commonsense seems prevail.

Do what you love and love what you do. The rest's just stuff.