Community is based in a shared purpose, place, time, or way of thinking.

Friends and community relations offer different kinds of needed social connection.

Community connection provides security, belonging, ballast, self-definition, and warmth.

For most people, school is our first community. After school, it’s probably work. Whether you’re a shopkeeper, programmer, or lawyer, you often find community – looser or tighter – with people in your office or who do the same work nearby. Nurses might belong to a union while project managers or HR employees join their professional organizations. It seems obvious.

Looking back, I see that the colleges where I taught English over the years were communities, but that wasn’t obvious to me. I thought of other faculty as co-workers rather than relations. I knew they weren’t friends, though some did become dear friends. I wish I’d have seen them then as I now do – as members of my community, or one significant one. Maybe I would have paid more attention and valued those connections more. Maybe I’d have noticed how my office neighbors brightened my day, more so as I got to know them better and asked about their Cancun vacation or listened to their advice about my injured foot. I wish I’d have brought my home-made lemon bars sometimes, or had been enthusiastic about the department’s whale-watching excursion. Maybe, back then, I’d have discovered the importance of community. But the concept of community eluded me, as I imagine it might for others.

I knew that........

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