Givers and Takers
Community is difficult to construct in our modern culture. We tend to manage little mini-communities—the adults we see at work, the parents of our children’s friends, our chosen friends we see in our free time. But these groups rarely intersect unless (possibly) you choose to step out of the modern culture and stay home with your children, or work at home, or homeschool, or all of the above. Trying to form and mesh with a consistent community is a skill I constantly work to acquire, and as I continue my work I have become aware that many people have this same problem—and no wonder! What are our models for forming community?
My dad often bemoans his poor childhood “on the block”. He lived in a blue collar city where everyone’s dads worked all the time to make ends meet, and when he wasn’t in school he was on the street with his friends or in his friends’ parents’ houses. He didn’t leave a two- or three-block area of his city, because all his friends were right there. But my dad doesn’t really value that experience—he only remembers that his family struggled financially, and that he didn’t want that experience for his own children.
Now I struggle to find community, not money, for my own children. I live on a “block”, though it’s a suburban version with quarter-acre lots of raised ranches and the like, and when I moved here I looked forward to my child making friends with kids who lived on this block. Except, he hasn’t, because there is no one here. Oh, many children live on this block, but they all go to public school and after that, they all attend after school programs. If we go out on block at around 5:30 pm, that’s when the kids are out playing for their few minutes before they have to go home for dinner and homework, if they even make it outside at all.
So instead, I have been trying out various groups that the local homeschoolers have formed in the hope of finding a community (albeit, one I must drive to) for me and my children. I’ve tried out three or four groups now, and I’ve discovered one of the keys to a group’s success: the number of takers versus givers within that group. You have the people (usually moms) who give their energy and time to making the community work, and you have the people who simply wish to benefit from the community without any significant energy expenditure on their part. But, like most things, it isn’t that simple. We’re a bipolar culture, and I think we tend to see things as either/or, but giving and taking, like gender and sexuality, are on a continuum. Some takers truly absorb energy from those around them, giving absolutely nothing in return. Some are more savvy about it, and give just enough to keep the other community members from calling them on their lack of involvement. But on the other end of the spectrum are the givers, the people (again, in my communities, usually moms) who give and give and give and don’t expect anything in return. Some of these moms, have been burned before and assume that if you want something done, you must do it yourself. Others, I think, derive their sense of personhood from how much they give, and you giving back to them both confuses and frightens them. And some, like me, simply bought the cultural edict, hook, line and sinker, that that’s what mothers do.
But nothing I have learned has taught me how to find that balance between taking and giving. But oh, when we find that balance! When we give to our communities, offer up our energies and our insights and our well-wishes, AND we take and enjoy the energies our fellows have to offer us… The synergy, the exponential growth of energy and zest and accomplishment that happens when everyone is right there, giving what they have, relishing the gifts we all offer each other—it is an experience beyond anything. And I believe it is our birthright, this kind of community. I have had groups that approach this, and it has been (and is!) such a fulfilling experience for me and my family. Can you imagine if every day, all our lives, we were fed like this by our communities?
