Cultivating Community: Our Path to Belonging
Imagine a seed below the ground’s surface. If alone and without supportive elements, the seed will not sprout. The soil must be enriched by other plants, roots, and creatures for the seed to be nourished. The rain must fall for the seed to extend a root. The sun must heat the earth to raise the seed sprout above the surface. If the seed is within a thriving ecosystem, it grows from protection, nutrients, and strength in the intricate web of life surrounding it. If the seed is isolated in depleted soil, it will not root or sprout. Each of us is like a seed.
We thrive when nestled in the soil of a dynamic community, where connection and mutual support nurture sustenance and resilience. Without community, we are as wasted as that solitary seed.
In our current era, we often overlook how deeply our lives depend on each other. From the hands that harvest our food to the neighbor who picks up the wind blown trash bin, these are the threads that form the vast web of belonging. In the US individualism has been celebrated and isolation is widespread, and we feel the subtle effects when making dinner for one or occupying a large house alone. The effects become more apparent when we navigate climate crises and loss of overall livelihood.
While we’re feeling at this moment very distanced from the connection of a tightly-knit community, the importance of rekindling that sense of belonging cannot be overstated. Let’s invite this sensation of fraction and detachment to be innate intelligence that can inform how we co-create culture moving forward.
Why Does Community Matter?
Human history is a story of interdependence. It was only up until a few centuries ago that we all lived and interacted in a community system that was as interconnected as the roots of a forest. Our interdependence within the home, the field, and the streets was a method of continuity and succession. Today, while our societal structure is very different, these expressions of interdependence are no less critical. While we may no longer need a village to hunt our dinner, we do need our community members to feel belonging, share resources, navigate crises, and address the challenges of our uncertain world.
The deficiencies of our current system are very clear in times of crisis. Climate disasters often lay bare the truth that community is our cardinal resource. In these moments, it’s neighbors—not distant organizations or bureaucracy — who offer meals, shelter, guidance, and support. These acts of care are not born from obligation but from our innate understanding that our well-being is tied to the well-being of those around us.
Yet, community is not only about survival; it’s also about prosperity. A felt sense of connection reduces our stresses, nourishes our immune and nervous systems, and generates lasting joy and purpose. When we nurture our relationships, we’re not just building bonds; we’re building resilience, both individually and collectively.
Strengthening the Threads of Belonging
We cannot reduce the importance of community to times of emergency. It’s the everyday interactions—the shared potluck, the spontaneous chats at your local market—that weave trust and solidarity that are needed to navigate larger and more widespread challenges.
Rebuilding community in an age of disconnection will ask of us intentionality. We must begin the circulation by being observant of others, even when it’s inconvenient, and offer what we can — be it time, skills, tangible resources, or compassion.
Communities will take many shapes and expressions, so we will be asked to create spaces for diversity. When we meet each other with our eyes, minds, and hearts, we’ll be shown the strength of a community lies not in its uniformity but in its ability to weave differences into a cohesive whole.
We believe that our future can look like neighborhoods organizing regular gatherings to share meals and check in with one another; a town setting up a time-banking system where people exchange skills and services; or a city that tends undeveloped squares donated by the landowner to be used as community gardens that feed both bodies and souls.
Reweaving the threads of interdependence does not require a transitionary period of destruction and loss. We can re-enforce a culture of care and cooperation by offering more of our presence to our landscapes.
Drawing Wisdom from Indigenous Systems
To understand how to cultivate intentional community today, we can look to Indigenous cultures that have long practiced interdependence. In all Indigenous communities, the land, people, and resources are not separate entities but parts of a unified whole. The Lakota concept of mitákuye oyás’iŋ—"all my relations”—demonstrates this ethos, emphasizing that every action impacts the collective web of life.
Indigenous communal systems prioritize collective stewardship and shared responsibility over individual resource hoarding. Thus, no one is without care and belongings because collective survival is dependent on the group’s strength. Elders are trusted to share their wisdom, children are raised by many hands, each adult provides what they are able to, and resources are distributed with consideration of collective sustainability and equity.
Modern adaptations of these principles are emerging in initiatives like community land trusts, which prioritize shared ownership and sustainability, and cooperative housing, which fosters communal decision-making and resource-sharing. Interdependence is not lost in the age of science and technology. We can root our contemporary efforts in the soil of our ancestor’s communities, and we can generate systems that prioritize collective care over individual gain.
Drawing inspiration from Indigenous systems will require humility and respect. These practices are not tools to be extracted or appropriated; they are living traditions that deserve acknowledgment and support. Co-creating with Indigenous communities and honoring their knowledge is vital to a non-segmented interdependent world.
Reimagining Community for the Future
To co-create a regenerative future, we can begin in our imaginations generating visions of belonging. Belonging is not exclusively a feeling; it is also an active process of shaping spaces in which we are all present, valued, and braced. In belonging there is an invitation to pivot away from a mindset of scarcity—where every person is a competitor—into a mindset of prosperity, where every variable enriches the whole.
We recognize the strenuousness in re-establishing an interdependent community. We’ll be asked to de-condition the narrative of individualism and embrace vulnerability. We’ll be asked to establish trust in others, and offer forgiveness for when others have failed in past engagements. We must co-create space for grace and pardon. We will be asked to offer more patience, empathy, and a willingness to engage in confrontation. In this process, we’ll be gifted resilience, joy, and a felt sense of purpose and kinship.
Building a community will look extraordinarily different for each of us depending on the landscapes that we inhabit — how close is your closest neighbor? What is the climate like? What resources do you have in abundance and in scarcity? Where are the children? How are families supported? What do the elders need?
We each have a role in societal transformation. You cannot receive without giving. Schedule weekly food drops with a neighbor, volunteer regularly for a local project, and make the time to listen to a community member's story. Every moment contributes to the collective future. We do not wait for a community, we build it with every choice and conversation.
If you don’t know where to start, here's our invitation: begin by making a commitment to do one act of servitude every day to someone who is not in your family or household. Possibilities will flow from here.