A newsletter headline: (after folks painted a mural on a cul-de-sac) Community is about doing something together that makes belonging matter.
Head Office Highlights, September 2023
Last week, regarding voting, I mentioned a man from a patriarchal planet coercing his wife’s vote. This week I met an acquaintance who said his little woman doesn’t answer her doorbell. I thought of Gru in Despicable Me not answering adorable orphans selling cookies, while pretending he wasn’t on the other side of the door. My acquaintance thought it was normal and common to hide in the home: Not by the door though, upstairs.
I wouldn’t tell a mere acquaintance he was wrong, anymore than I’d depart down the sidewalk gayly singing Helen Reddy’s “I am woman.” But if he and I had been friends, or students doing the “meaning of life over a coffee thing,” then I would have said, “According to the city of Vancouver, you are wrong.”
Vancouver is a pretty port city with cultures from all over the world. When the census workers found that house after house had “nobody home” they didn’t say this was normal. They said this was why housing prices had abruptly rocketed to a million dollars for a small bungalow. Non-locals were buying houses, leaving them empty. Or later, at most, bringing over a caretaker who didn’t want to be a loyal Vancouverite.
The problem with not greeting Girl Guides selling cookies, not going to watch the Guides as part of a big cultural event, not volunteering to be a Guide leader, not volunteering to guide needy senior citizens to go shopping—I am running out of “guide” metaphors… is a matter of health: Both your mental health and your country’s civic health. Because after you participate you may begin caring for your city and country, caring enough to accept responsibility. Getting out onto the sidewalk can lead to singing, “You belong to the city, pavement under your feet.” (Glen Frey)
One alternative to a sense of belonging and caring is to be like the Russians: I’ve seen their Person-In-the-Street interviews on Youtube, where Russians are asked a question by a fellow Russian. When asked about what Russians are doing to Ukraine… they feel no guilt whatsoever. It’s as if they have their adult right to vote but aren’t grown-ups yet.
Of course, some folks genuinely prefer to ignore their community, like hunched over computer guys living in their mother’s basement.’ Or self-contained old men like me. But still. To quote from my essay mentioning a robot (Klara and the Sun)
QUOTE If “men without women lose their purpose,” (Sixth Column) so do people without people, and robots without people.
One way to be sadly “without people” is to be an immigrant woman stuck at home. Well. A local woman has just won an award for 25 years of supporting fresh immigrants to happily get out of the house and mingle by doing volunteer work. …UNQUOTE
As for robots, I remember Sarah Connor moving her family to a new school to avoid Terminators. John comes home complaining the kids at school all wear cowboy boots. No doubt if those kids went to his previous school then they would complain too, maybe even, after some time in a new town, saying“They’re all stupid!” Sometimes alleged culture shock comes from something as simple as being lonely. Something to keep in mind if I take a job in Vancouver.
As for enjoying a cultural event, there are so many events and places to go to acquire your community spirit. A high school principle told us, “Remember how when you first came here you felt so alone, the school felt so cold? But then you joined a club…”
It was my grade 10 English teacher, Mr. Wong, who told us our default state is to feel “alienation and isolation.” As if the popular head cheerleader and the football quarterback feels “There’s everybody else, and there’s me.” As if an adult homebody in Vancouver thinks “There’s me and there are those real Vancouverites… let them get involved.” Mr. Wong gave us all sorts of poems and short stories on that theme, even songs, such as Sounds of Silence and I am a Rock. As for isolated rocks, at my college a pretty blond nursing student burst out to me, “It’s so easy to be a hermit!”
At my two-year college a teacher indirectly advised us against seeing solely the same two people for tea and cookies for two or three decades. Majoring in Leisure Services, we had told him brightly, in early September, we were going to have a party! With the goal of getting first year students to come and feel like “part of the program.” He frowned, and said a new student would bring an acquaintance along, and then the two would clump together the whole party.
Since we were taking Leisure the solution for us was easy: Have an icebreaker activity in, say, groups of four. Our teacher reminded us we then needed to mix folks up for yet another icebreaker, lest we now have four people clumping together all night, without coming to feel “part of the program.”
Next door to me now lives an old man of Chinese heritage, with basic English, who walks out every day using two ski poles. He has a delightful way of serving our country: I could imagine him helping someone away from doing drugs or vandalism on a given day —work with me here— because that day, on his walk, he gave them a cheery hello and words of warm regard.
God save the king.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Alberta, Canada
September
2023
NOTES
Metaphor: If the “concrete sea” seems adverse and annoying, then the words of a Pacific pilot in WWII, stuck in a stupid jungle base may apply, “The trick being that when you were out of the cockpit, you had to get your mind on some kind of activity or interest. That muted the adversities, and made the time go faster.” He said if you fought it, the heat got hotter and the food got worse. (Richard C. Kirkland, War Pilot, 1999, p. 100)
Democracy note: My only words of comfort for Ukrainians feeling sad about firing drones against air bases in Russia is: “People get the government they deserve.”
Footnote: My quoted essay, August 20, 2021, (page 19) is Running with Robots and Volunteers
Helen Reddy’s hit: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=lyrics+i+am+woman+helen+reddy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:77f8dc1b,vid:Zu4xpDuf84A
Song: I am a Rock, Simon and Garfunkel,
Song: Sounds of Silence, sung in the movie The Graduate, is bySimon and Garfunkel, https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=song+sounds+of+silence&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
