You Can't Do It Alone (That's a Lonely, Expensive Place to Be)
On finding your tribe and building a community that works for you
Welcome to Simple + Straightforward, a weekly letter about living on your own terms in a simple, meaningful way. If this is your first time here, welcome! I’m so pleased to have you in this little community.
Yesterday marked a month of staying with my family. It wasn’t meant to be this long, but you know - Covid.
When I was thinking about what I would like to write this week, I mulled over the last month. What has popped into my busy little brain time and time again, whilst living with family?
One word shone through it all.
Community. And what building a community - or finding your tribe - can do for you.
Because your family is your OG tribe. People who have supported you both emotionally and physically and shared pretty much everything with you from the moment you were born.
If you’re lucky enough to have a (debatably) functional family, you’ll also have people who will do a lot for you. I sure felt that this month. My parents lent me their car. I spent a lot of my time at my brother’s house, eating straight out of his fridge and drinking his beers. I used their beds, their showers, their kitchens, their gardens.
As I fly through the air right this minute, leaving the comforting family fold towards the bright lights of Istanbul, one thought keeps running through my mind.
We don’t rely on community enough.
The “get off that’s mine” conundrum
What does a usual living situation in the Western world look like? You live with family until you come of age. You move out, perhaps to college. You share with friends until you can afford to live on your own. Maybe you meet someone, move in with them. You have kids of your own, and the whole cycle starts again. One little nuclear family begets another.
You craft a life that is “yours.” You buy everything from scratch - the car, the house, everything that fills that house. It replicates itself in every house on your street, your town, your county.
We believe that we can make it on our own, we don’t need anyone else. If we need to borrow something, we feel guilty that we didn’t think to own the item ourselves. We worry about putting people out simply by ringing the doorbell and asking.
We’ve become so insular.
As someone who travels full time and owns only what I can fit into my suitcase, I keenly feel this. I rely on other people for everything, from the roof over my head to a borrowed car. And I feel guilty about it sometimes, worrying that I put people out, or that my lifestyle isn’t sustainable because I rely so much on other people and “their” stuff. How could I possibly do it on my own?
But in reality, I’m looking at it all the wrong way.
Relying on community isn’t a sign of weakness
In fact, it’s super powerful.
I remember listening to a podcast episode of The Minimalists where they tackled the breakdown of communities.
They commented that modern life has replaced communities with paid services. Where we used to have live-in grandparents who would share parenting duties for their grandchildren, we now have to pay for childcare. Where we used to care for our aging parents, they now have to pay for a nursing home.
It may take a village to bring up a child but now, that village will cost you money.
Economically, environmentally and mentally, that’s a bit dumb. We are all so strapped for time and money, but if we pooled our resources, we could become far more than the sum of our parts.
Say you have a row of houses, each with a small backyard. Each yard has a shed and in each shed is a lawnmower. On a street of 100 houses, you’ll find 100 lawnmowers.
And yet how many times do you need to mow your lawn? Once every couple of weeks in the summer? Why does a street need so many lawnmowers for that? Couldn’t the street have 5 communal ones, saving time, space, money, and environmental impact?
The best communities implement this concept in countless ways, every single day.
Communities rely on more than money (and that’s a good thing)
So there I am, chugging my brother’s beers and scoffing chocolate from his cupboard (hey, it was Christmas after all), using his spare room, and contributing to his energy bill.
How did I contribute?
Sure, I ensured I did plenty of grocery shopping and replenished those beers. But I also did something else that meant more to him and his wife than the cash.
I gave them time.
They have two girls under 5. They get just a few hours of sleep a night and their patience is tested every single day.
Cue Auntie Charlie, who would saunter downstairs after her 8 hours sleep (thank you, child-free life) and take over the parenting role whilst the actual parents went back to bed. I would make them their breakfast, dress them, take them out walking. I would deliver them to their grandparents and pick them up.
Most nights, I cooked for us all. I washed, tidied, cleaned, and fed the cat and chickens.
It was my payment for staying with them and I was happy to do it because I know it helped them out far more than chucking a few quid in their bank account every few days could ever do.
This is the best thing about building community. The small transactions that occur don’t have to be exclusively monetary - they can be time and skill-based too.
In fact, they absolutely should be.
Building a community of your own
I’ve used my family as an example here but communities don’t have to be family-based.
There are some incredible examples of communities that are redefining how we think we need to live. Like co-living spaces where like-minded people support each other both professionally and personally, sharing the load in both spaces.
Or couples who find other couples to co-parent their kids with, sharing the parenting duties so each adult has time not only with their partner but with themselves too.
But you don’t have to give up your house and personal space in order to build a community that works for you. The best example I’ve ever come across of this is with my friend Tanja (who I know receives this email, hey mate!)
Tanja lives in Croatia and has built an incredible community around her. She has friends she can rely on for everything from developing amazing projects to somewhere to stay for the night when she needs it.
I’ve personally been a small part of Tanja’s community. I spent a month in her town last summer. At one point, she asked me and a few friends to help build a co-working space. I was more than happy to do it because Tanja gives so much back to you. You want to be part of her community - and thus help build co-working spaces - because it feels great to really be a part of something bigger, something that will sustain you, and not just in a monetary sense. Being part of that community felt like being at home.
Tanja is the living embodiment of what a good community should look like.
Stuff I’ve done this week to push my comfort zone
Climbed a mountain that tried to kill me. I was unfit, and to be honest it was a little bit beyond my capabilities thanks to difficult weather conditions. But I survived and felt pretty good at the achievement.
Visited Istanbul. I’m guilty of playing it safe when it comes to travel, often staying in the cozy familiarity of Europe. Istanbul is a new one for me and I’m expecting it to be more challenging than I’m used to. Bring it on.
Written some strong opinions on Medium. Sometimes it’s easy to play it safe over there because if you don’t, dragons can hide in the comments section. But I had something to say about rental markets, so I wrote it. And I’ve been watching my notifications through my fingers ever since.