I've been sold community more times than I can count.
It comes with the coworking space pitch. It comes with the nomad retreat brochure. It comes with the Facebook group that has Community right there in the name, capital C, like the word alone is enough to make the thing real.
I fell for it the first few times. You do. You arrive somewhere new and you don't know anyone and the loneliness is a specific weight you carry around all day and when someone says community you lean toward it the way you lean toward heat in a cold room.
I remember a Tuesday in Chiang Mai.
New coworking space. The kind with exposed brick and plants and a sign near the entrance that said something about collaboration and creative energy. The coffee was good. The wifi was fast. There were maybe twenty people in the room.
I sat down. I opened my laptop. The man to my left had headphones on. The woman across from me had headphones on. I put my headphones on.
We sat like that until 6pm.
At 6pm there was a networking event in the downstairs bar. Eight people showed up including me. We stood around with drinks and talked about what we did and where we were from and where we were going next. I collected three Instagram handles and gave out two. Someone said we should grab dinner sometime. Nobody grabbed dinner.
I walked home alone in the dark.
There was a woman at a cart on the corner selling pad thai. I sat on a plastic stool and ate it in ten minutes and it cost a dollar and the woman who made it didn't know my name and didn't need to and that was the best human interaction I'd had all day.
Here is what I've learned about community in this life.
The word is used by two different kinds of people.
The first kind uses it to sell something. The coworking space with the sign. The nomad retreat at $2,000 a week that promises deep connection and delivers a WhatsApp group that goes quiet after three weeks. The online course with the private Facebook group where members post wins and nobody posts the other thing. Community as product. Community as justification for the price point.
The second kind doesn't use the word at all.
The real thing I've found in Southeast Asia didn't announce itself. It was a person I kept seeing at the same café until we started nodding and then talking and then one day sitting together for three hours and saying things I don't say to most people. It was a group of four who met by accident and started having dinner every Thursday because nobody planned it and somehow that made it work. It was a message from someone in a different city at 11pm on a Sunday that said I'm having a hard week and I said me too and that was enough.
None of it had a sign. None of it had a membership fee. None of it was organised by anyone.
The loneliness in this life is real. I've written about it before and I'll write about it again because it doesn't go away and pretending it does helps nobody.
But the cure is not the thing they're selling.
The cure is slower and quieter and more accidental than any retreat or coworking membership or networking event can manufacture. It requires time in one place. It requires showing up to the same corner enough times that the corner starts to know you. It requires the specific vulnerability of saying I don't know anyone here to someone who might become someone.
It cannot be purchased at $25 a day.
I still use coworking spaces. I still join groups. I'm not against the infrastructure.
I'm against the word being used to describe the infrastructure as if the word makes the thing true.
Community is not a sign on a wall. It is not a Slack channel. It is not eight people in a bar on a Tuesday exchanging Instagram handles under the impression that this is connection.
It is the woman at the pad thai cart who doesn't know my name.
It is Thursday dinner that nobody planned.
It is the message at 11pm that just says me too.
Everything else is a desk with a view and a very nice sign.
Andrew — No Refunds •••