My son and I have a tradition: once a week we don’t get in the car. I realize that depending on where you are reading this, that statement is either completely nonsensical or obvious. We live in a small town in northern California, and the car gets us places, to other places. Occasionally, though, we want to stay put.
Our day-about-town, otherwise known as ‘Neighborhood Day’, typically follows the same routine: We walk down the hill, we go to the playground, we have coffee at the roastery (well, he has hot chocolate), we play in the creek, and we walk up the hill again (with a picnic from the local bakery half way up).
I remember walking to the shops with my mum when I was a kid. I think all they had was a 7-11, a sweet shop, maybe a launderette. And the trip was all concrete, roads and pavement. But these slow days always felt like a treat. Maybe it had something to do with the conversations we had on the way over, her hand in mine.
But this week, when we got to the playground, the shape of our day went in a different direction. It was the annual maintenance day – all wheelbarrows and rakes to be borrowed, woodchips to be spread around, and old toys to be mended or thrown away. Sam and I jumped into the sand pit as is our habit, and then jumped into helping, which isn’t.
We spent an hour covered in dirt and dust, shoveling new sand on top of old, meeting parents we’d only made eye contact with, and kids who shared a similar interest as my son in tools and gardening equipment. Chatting about nothing at all, sharing a common purpose for a sliver of a day, developing a sense of belonging in a place we visit often enough that we should have one already.
Feeling part of something bigger than ourselves has an impact on how we feel about ourselves. And being with people not on a one-to-one level, but in a wider community sense can make us feel connected and, yes, more contented. In The Depression Cure, Stephen Ilardi writes that ‘Those lucky enough to find authentic community today are much happier (on average) than those who live in its absence.’
Given our hunter-gather background, our tribal ancestors, he argues that: ‘All of us are born to connect, hardwired to live in the company of those who know and love us. When we draw deep from the wells of social support—the care and concern of close friends, family and community—we’re more resilient to the slings and arrows of fortune, and we’re considerably less vulnerable to depression. Social connection helps push the brain in an antidepressant direction, turning down activity in stress circuitry, and boosting the activity of feel-good brain chemicals like dopamine and serotonin. That’s why it makes sense to swim hard against the tide of our “culture of isolation”…’
So, feeling good about ourselves, Sam and I left for our next stop, coffee, and stumbled on a new monthly flea market. Produced by a pop-up store – that itself is run by graphic designers, illustrators, and makers – temporary shops had been set up under tents and tarpaulin on the site of an old, disused garage. More wandering, more chatting. More conversations, this time about art colleges and adoption. Sam almost convinced me to take a dog home from the Milo Foundation taking advantage of my beatific mood, but we settled on an accordion instead.
Then it was time to go back up the hill, and more surprises. Not the dulcet tone of the accordion now accompanying our walk, nor that it didn’t annoy me in the way it usually would. No, this time it was ‘Gifts from the Street’. This is something I’ve only come to know in San Francisco. It makes my husband thrilled and makes me shiver. When people are done with something, if it's in good condition, they leave it on the street in front of their homes, and place a ‘free’ sign on it, for anyone to take. Walking around a neighborhood, you can find what is less attractively known as ‘salvage’—ranging from the icky such as towels and used coffee mugs to the, lets face it, rather spoiling—Camper shoes, in the right size and style. In my house, we have another rule, the husband can pick up stuff when I’m not with him. But that day, Sam and I walked by, and took home, a toy firetruck for him and a Le Creuset dish for me. Husband was oddly proud, I was oddly thrilled. Points for the street.
And I realized this is why we don’t get in the car, for the thing that we walk through, that is around us all the time. Not the air we breathe, but the community that surrounds us.
We’re taught to buy local, to eat local, but how about we be local? Actually live in the place that you live.
As a brit a long way from home, who has adopted this quirky small town, I realize the irony of this statement too. But if you can choose where you live, then do, and once you have, participate in that community; not in a running for councilor way, though that’s good too, but in an ego-less meandering and getting-to-know kind of way.
Writing in Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi got this sense of the smallness that can be our relationship to our community: ‘A community should be judged good not because it is technologically advanced, or swimming in material riches; it is good if it offers people a chance to enjoy as many aspects of their lives as possible, while allowing them to develop their potential in the pursuit of ever greater challenges’.
There’s an ice-cream store in town. When we lived in SF, we’d come here just for their salted caramel and honey lavender ice-cream. While waiting in line, I used to read the poster at the entrance, a list of all those things you can do to build a community. I’d think it was quaint. For all my adult life, I have lived in cities; now 8-months into living here, in small town America, I have not only a new home, but one of those things called community too.
Amongst the things the poster advises:
Turn off your tv; leave your house; look up when you are walking; use your library; fix it even if you didn’t break it; put up a swing; bake extra and share; open your shades; turn up the music; turn down the music; seek to understand;
and, my favourite, start a tradition.