Previously, I wrote that community can enrich the things we do, enabling us to explore things we wouldn't be able to explore on our own. This led to a few conversations with some of you where I realized the "who" (community) and the "what" (skills, hobbies, careers) of our lives are even more interwoven than simply that.
We expend a ton of energy cultivating both relationships and skills, but we often miss or discount the link between them. Can being more perceptive here lead to increased success in both domains?
(Just a note, there are many other reasons to invest in community, and these deserve examination — topic for a future essay.)
It goes both ways
While many of us seemingly cultivate communities and skills separately, the two can enrich one another.
In one direction, communities can enrich your activities. As mentioned, this was discussed in a previous essay. One small addendum: though you may not consider this to be true, teachers and fellow learners are part of your community! When you move on from that activity, you may not keep the connections. But, for the present, they are part of your Middle Layer.
In the other direction, activities can enrich your communities. Sometimes we simply run out of things to say. We still want to connect, but we're not sure over what. We run out of life updates because no one is moving or switching jobs or meeting a new partner anymore. Or we grow tired of the mundane recapping of what we ate and who slightly annoyed us.
It can be intimidating to attend a dinner party with no agenda. Sometimes a new format, constraints, or rules can help us be more creative. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker talks about how pop-up rules can help create an immersive and bonding experience that is both more experimental and egalitarian than, say, etiquette.
Activities are more specific than rules, but it's the same idea. Activities can be immersive, bonding, experimental, and egalitarian. Think games like Monopoly, Mario Kart, or Drawbattle. When you spend time with the people you see the most like your close friends and family, you may run out of conversation. And maybe politics is too stressful these days. But you still want to connect, so you bust out some boardgames.
My friend Sharon is able to connect with her brother on a regular basis while living far apart during the pandemic by playing video games together online.
Recently, as an excuse to connect with people, I've been reading books with a book club and taking online classes on Coursera (I plan to do a follow up article on this!).
Some of us leverage one of these directional links but not the other. Some of us do neither. I believe that both links are well worth the investment.
The "who" and the "what" are formed together
Not only do our communities and our activities enrich each other, but they're formed together. We may think that we're intrinsically interested in the things we do but there are subtle external influences, including and especially the people in our lives.
I've long been fascinated with the concept of identity formation. Since reading Carol Dweck's Mindset, I've been obsessed with the idea that, since we have the potential to be good at almost anything, the things we end up being good at are primarily the product of early positive validation. I hadn't before considered how communities are a big part of that validation.
We will often pick up new skills for the express purpose of connecting with others. My friend Mindy shared with me that, within her swing dance community in New York, many people were initially motivated to start dancing because they were looking for a community outside of work.
If we think back to our hobbies, how many of them originated as social activities and then became part of our identity as solo activities later? I wanted to learn ceramics but not so badly that I would've done it by myself. Instead, I was able to take my first intro class with Sharon, Aditi, Sophia, Alex, and Peter. It was fun to try something new and hang out with friends. Now, I'll join a studio not knowing anybody because ceramics has transformed into a solo activity.
The perhaps dark side of this: how often does not having a supportive community lead to not investing in certain activities? I call this the "community constraint."
When I moved to New York two years ago, I found myself both consciously and unconsciously gravitating toward things I could do alone. Instead of hosting dinners, trying out new restaurants, and planning day trips with friends, I zeroed in on solo activities like reading, yoga, and ceramics.
A lifetime of learning
I will confess to having perhaps too many hobbies. I love hobbies. The New Yorker just ran an article "Is It Really Too Late to Learn New Skills?" suggesting that learning new things can be a cure for perfectionism and that people learn better when learning multiple things. For me, hobbies are tied to a personal value around growth and cultivating a lifetime of learning. I love being a beginner and I love being slightly out of my depth.
Even so, I've never before reflected on how communities and activities intersect.
By becoming more aware of how the relationships and skills we're cultivating intersect and have the potential to intersect, I believe we can be more successful in both.
I'd love to hear from you:
Do you find yourself mostly diving into hobbies and interests first, then building a community to support them? Or do you find yourself cultivating community first, and then finding activities to support your community? (Or both, or neither?)
Whichever link you don't do as much, if you'd be willing to experiment with investing in the opposite link, I'd be very curious what you find! Were you able to make connections through your hobbies? Were you able to deepen an existing relationship by bringing in an activity?
Next up:
Why invest - Why do we like spending time with other people? What does it provide us in the moment and what does it provide us in the long run? Why is community worth potentially more investment than you might be putting in at the moment? Why do we encounter so much resistance to investing in community (e.g. taking chunks of time out of our busy schedules)?
> I wanted to learn ceramics but not so badly that I would've done it by myself.
Totally in the same boat! It was so surprising to me that this casual class to spend time with friends transformed into a serious part of my creative identity -- which just goes to show how valuable it is to have friends to try new things with.
Sometimes I get anxious about learning new skills later in life but a really powerful anecdote to that is actually YouTube. Some of the top instructors started way later in life -- like Matthew Encina who did this entire office makeover as his *first* woodworking project ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_9el8ZN6A