Let's Get Together

I remember my second grade Social Studies curriculum. First grade was "My Home." Third grade was "My State." Second grade was in between: "My Community."

Somewhere between home and the government is community.

Community is "a feeling of fellowship with others." We take our word from the very similar Latin word "communitas", which emphasizes a shared experience.

I've noticed lately how many communities there are. A hundred years ago, large cities had areas where different nationalities congregated, and even today immigrants from Jamaica might gravitate to Jamaica, Queens, and you may find a preponderance of Italian families near Mulberry Street in Manhattan. There is neither prejudice nor discrimination in doing so.

We all seek out the familiar. People like us. People that understand what we're going through and can be a support system for us.

Hence the multiplication of communities, on-line and in gathering places, worldwide.

I have joined several communities in 2017. My chronic disease brought me unwittingly into the psoriatic arthritis community. Megan Rutell grabbed my attention with her pageflutter blog, so I joined the bullet journal community. I've joined the writers' community at large, following several blogs and participating in several groups, including shewrites.com.

Those groups meet my needs and encourage me to participate. You can find groups for every interest under the sun: cyclists and hiking and yoga and cooking and adults returning to college and soldiers returning from deployment. Whatever community you feel part of, there are others like you who can support and encourage you.

You just have to seek them out. Many of these can be found on facebook, so that is a good place to start. But you can also search for local groups on meetup.com. As 2017 ebbs and flows into 2018, make community your word of the year.

Let's get together. Yeah, yeah, yeah!