And Return
| July 5, 2012 | Posted by Issa under Counter/Culture |
I have returned home from the Rainbow Gathering.
Re-entry from these kinds of things is always tough.
I had an… interesting time. Maybe even life-changing, although certainly not in any ways I could have expected. I may have a lot more to say about the Rainbow Family later on after more processing, but for now let me just say that I’m glad I went and I’m glad I’m home.
I think I’m having a mid-life crisis. It’s been happening since Dylan was born, but I think this week was the peak. I’ve got a lot of questions about who I am, where I fit, where I’m going, what I want. Since I’m not a teenager, it must be a mid-life crisis. It involves a lot of thinking. And angst.
Two things weigh heavily on my mind as I contemplate the contrasts between my experience at the Rainbow Gathering and my experience in my day-to-day life. One is the meaning of community and one is the role of the online world. I’d love to hear your ideas and add them to my swirling thoughts.
What does community mean to you? Do you belong to a community? Do you have a group of people that you belong to, and with? People that you can call “my people”? How do you know that you are one of them, and how do they know that you are one of them? What role do these people play in your daily life?
What role does online stuff play in your daily life? How much time do you spend online? How much time/energy do you spend on social media? To what extent are your social media efforts about enriching in-person relationships versus primarily online relationships? Any other thoughts about social media or the online world?
Building and participating in a like-minded community is one of my life goals, so it is very important to me and I know a lot of other social justice oriented folks. It helps us to rely less on oppressive systems and more on each other. It is part of building power that leads to lasting social change.
That being said, I have been in a graduate school limbo for the past 5 years where I haven’t been able to participate and build these relationships as I would like. The internet then has been SO helpful to augment the ideas and thoughts that so many people around me do not have. It is beyond frustrating not being able to put forth the required energy into building these offline relationships, but I know it is temporary.
I really enjoyed sherry turkle’s book, alone together that looks at how social media negatively impacts our offline relationships. I agree with a lot she has to say, but I think that online relationships are so important to us folks who really do not have a lot of time to expend outside of work or every day life. It is also important for us whose beliefs are in the minority around us. I do wonder though to what extent my life would be different if I did not have the computer to pacify me, but at the same time I don’t think i would have been exposed to so many ideas, and would probably be less radical.
I think it is beautiful that you are struggling with these ideas—they are so important.
The internet is really valuable to me, too, for getting to share ideas with people that are harder to find elsewhere – especially social justice related ideas. I worry that I make too much of a bubble for myself online and that it inhibits my ability to navigate the outside world. When I went to Euphoria, for example, I was shocked (SHOCKED!) at the amount of cultural appropriation I saw that no one else seemed to mind. I’m so used to my little online world, I was really bothered by what I was seeing. Is that good for me? Does that usefully serve me? I don’t know.
Building and participating in community is a serious goal of mine, too, but I’m 35 and I have fewer friends these days, not more, because I chose moving to some acreage and raising animals over the friends I did have. Where is that community going to come from? I’m mostly an introvert, too, so “meeting people” is a daunting task, nevermind people I really mesh with, nevermind building community.
Gah. It’s tough.
Wow. I would love to talk about this stuff in person. We did some, when I was up in Chatt, talking about me weeding my people garden.
Community is a very broad term for me. Generally I think of it as a larger sum of people who all have crossover interests. Burner community, BDSM community, LGBT community, etc. Base interests in common, maybe more, maybe that is all.
When I say “my people” I am talking about a very very small number of people who share all of their lives with me, as I share all of my life with them. These people include my lovers and my family–both chosen and blood. (There are few blood family here.)
I am willing to bare all to these few and I want the same in return.
Then there is the friend circle of people… those I love to hang out with, either one on one or in a group. Contact is not daily, regardless of online or not, but regular. We might text each other occasionally, just to say we are thinking of one another. We might get dinner once a +/-month.
Then there is the social circle of people… those I want to keep a connection with, but it isn’t as tight as either of the above two groups. Contact with this group is mostly online, via one social network or another, with occasional seeing them at an event or other social gathering.
For me, the use of social media has helped with expanding deeper connections to people I am already close to, as I often will see a glimpse of something that piques my interest and am curious as to how that whatever works in their world view. It gives easy ways to have daily contact without expending giants amount of energy. (I am so not a phone talker, I prefer talking in person, but an online blip here or long discussion there goes a long way in having daily contact.)
I also enjoy social media to help me bridge the quick connections made at places like Burning Man or regional burns, to keep that contact because in that meeting they sparked something in me.
But when it comes down to it, I try to put most of my energy into that first group… “my people” and share gently what I have left.
You’ve described kind of how I’d *like* to use social media and the different circles of people. But I’m not sure it really ends up working that way for me. It just seems to become this huge time-suck for me where I feel like I’m chasing some kind of connection with a huge number of people and not getting it at all. And so I periodically do this suck back into my shell thing where I only want to talk to three or four people and only in person, dammit. That doesn’t stick, either, of course. I’m just chasing shadows of some kind of community and connection to people and feeling pretty dissatisfied the whole time.
I understand the dissatisfaction. It’s one of the reasons I took a step back and re-evaluated what was really important to me.
What were my goals in my relationships with people? That was a tough one to answer and still not 100% sure I know the answer/s. To say build deeper connections seems so cheesy, but that is really what it boiled down to. To not have so many just on the surface relationships, but to really become invested in the people I care about. I can do that even if someone is hundreds of miles away. It makes the face to face talk time more difficult, but that doesn’t change the level of investment.
This may seem like an odd question, but what part/s of your life or personality are you trying to feed? I asked myself this question too… answers were of the nature of spirituality, music, creativity, philosophy, touch, playfulness, mutual support in personal goals, etc.
I love your blog, I stumbled upon it today. I am not a fan of the rainbow thing. I remember a bus full showed up at the warehouse where I lived and wanted to stay. We were like ummmm no….we don’t know you!!! Then the guy tried to hug me. I replied, you touch me and I will level you. He backed up and declared, rainbow sister, bad attitude….
Middle age is as tumultuous as teenagedom. You have my thoughts with you..
Interestingly, I encountered a lot of bitching and bad attitudes there. I expected to feel like an odd one out because I’m so snarky. Instead, I felt surrounded by assholes! It was a surprise.
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts about Rainbow and generally have more of this conversation in person, soon, at the build :)
My ideas line up pretty closely with Clove’s. Specifically, I think of communities not just as places where I feel a sense of belonging, but also as avenues for self-exploration. I’m heavily involved in the burner community now, of course. I’m not sure if I’ll always be. I was heavily involved in other communities (pagan, birthy) and mostly moved on from them…at least for now. I still visit. I might return if the things I need to explore are more focused there. I might be less involved with burns if my needs begin to be met better elsewhere. Community is a broad concept, for me, and different from my people or my family. There are people who I still feel close to, regardless of what community connection brought us together. I hesitate to say “forever people”, but that’s the closest phrase I can find.
I’m mostly disenchanted with social networking. I find that my life is best expressed by being out in the world and that I am fuller and happier when I am. Like Clove said, it’s nice to be able to deepen connections with those I don’t see often, so I appreciate it for that purpose.
I have noticed an odd phenomenon, though. We can all have more “friends” now than we reasonably could, given time and distance. I’m not sure, though, that we’re emotionally capable of more, just because we can suddenly check some boxes and squeeze them all in. If I have 100 people I’m friendly with, I still feel sad and lonely if there’s no one I can truly unload to when things get tough. Nothing replaces that. The people I share my life with are still the most important and the most vital to my emotional well-being.
I like your idea of communities as avenues for personal exploration. That kind of fits in with the social self-doubt I’m having coinciding with uncertainty about my life direction in general. I’m just not sure what I’m looking for, so it stands to reason I’m not sure where to look for it! :-)
“I’m just not sure what I’m looking for, so it stands to reason I’m not sure where to look for it! :-)”
Ugh. I hate that feeling. I get that every few years. It’s this sort of itch in my belly that says, “I need something…but I don’t know what it is!” Time for a change, I guess? That’s what it usually means for me.
PS Are we old enough to have a mid-life crisis? Creepy ;)
It might be a tad early… but that just means I’m very advanced! :-)
Well, of course, you are. :)
I probably have some kind of minor-life crisis every few years. I’m never quite happy without shaking things up, a bit.
I heard of RG and BM at the same time, in the same conversation. I really wanted to do both. In the years since, I’ve heard nothing good about RG. I know some people that went (I don’t know why) and didn’t like it one bit. It was everything I’d heard it was (mooching-ass hippies, showing up and expecting the proverbial playa to provide). The last group I knew that I was thinking about going with was a Christian group that went and provided food, because they knew most of the people showed up without any. I hope you had some fun, I’d love to hear more about it.
I wouldn’t say that I had fun. It was interesting. Maybe even valuable. I’m happy to talk about it in more detail in person. Get your butt to Alchemy! :-)