COMMUNITY

  
The absence of a true community leaves a couple totally responsible for themselves and anything else around them. With the ways of getting their needs met so greatly narrowed, their relationship becomes their community. And if the relationship fails to fulfill this role, then the individuals begin to feel as if they have failed as well.

It’s very strange to regard two people as a community. Where is everybody else? On my first visit home after moving to the United States, I told my mother that just [my husband] Malidoma and I lived in our house. To her, living like this was inconceivable; she thought I was crazy. It meant that we were getting no outside energy to support and strengthen our relationship. We were basically left with the impossible task of figuring things out on our own.

In my own marriage, I now bring as many people as I can into the relationship. They can help you with ritual, give you a hug when you need it, or provide a fresh perspective. You are free to do what you want with their advice, of course, but sometimes you will find that you are spiritually blind to something that a friend sees clearly.

When you don’t have a community of friends and family involved in a relationship, you base all your intimate expectations on your marriage. And that is too much to ask of any relationship. Of course, your partner is your friend and family, but to get everything from one person is absolutely impossible. 

It may be hard for Westerners to imagine what it’s like to have everything they own belong to the whole community, but this is the case in the village. As a result, each person in the village contributes to the well-being of others. When you have a child, for instance, it’s not just your child, it’s the community’s child. Therefore, from birth onward, the mother alone is not responsible for a child. Anybody else can feed and nurture the child. if another woman has a baby, she can breast-feed any child and it’s perfectly all right. Giving children a broader sense of community helps them to rely on more than just one person. That way, if a child seeks help from someone and doesn’t get it, she can go to somebody else. 

I remember when I was a kid, I had the choice of a different father every day, depending on my mood. So if I wanted one of my uncles to be my father for the day, I would focus all my attention on that person and ignore the others. And the others wouldn’t take it personally, because they saw it as an opportunity for me to decide what I wanted. As for couples, when they have children without a community to support them, they don’t have much time to work out whatever is going on between them. Things pile up until one day the children leave and they suddenly realize there is a mountain of things they haven’t dealt with for years. When they cannot resolve their problems, they split apart. The absence of community support is, I think, a major reason why many couples divorce after their children leave home.

How can we move toward saner families and relationships? We need to look at some of the fundamentals of a health community -- spirit, children, elders, responsibility, gift-giving, accountability, ancestors, and ritual. After moving to the United States I noticed that I often sat inside for an entire day without going out, and it occurred to me how inconceivable this would have been in the village, where the first thing we almost always did each morning was go outside. If you didn’t go out, people worried about you, because it meant you were unwell. If we want better relationships and families and communities, perhaps that begins by going outside, talking to our neighbors, learning to trust each other, and helping each other out.

-- Sobonfu Some, The Spirit of Intimacy