Villaging

I have a village-shaped longing. Not just for good friends, interesting conversations, shared meals, or people to celebrate with. I’m lucky to have some of those things. I long for the kind of belonging that lives between the gatherings. People who notice when someone hasn’t been around. Who know when the garden needs watering or the dog needs walking. Who can ask for help without feeling like they’ve made an unreasonable demand. Who have become part of each other’s ordinary Tuesdays. People whose lives matter to each other in practical, ongoing ways.

I know I’m not alone. Most of us have been raised to organize our lives around our independence. We have our own homes, schedules, responsibilities, and carefully managed needs. We may love our friends dearly and still be strikingly absent from the everyday fabric of each other’s lives.

We know how to get together. But do we know how to belong to each other?

A living experiment

With a group of friends we call The Village People, I’ve been experimenting with what it might mean to grow more village-shaped relationships. There have been shared meals, celebrations, rituals, dancing, sauerkraut-making, and moments of extraordinary warmth and generosity. Some gatherings have felt like little glimpses of the world I long to inhabit. There has also been disappointment.

I’ve discovered that a wonderful gathering doesn’t necessarily become an ongoing relationship of mutual care. That people can genuinely love each other while wanting very different things from community. That some of us have more room in our lives for interdependence than others. And that the person with the village-shaped longing can accidentally become the village’s unpaid activities director. I know this position. The benefits are excellent. The salary is nonexistent.

I’m learning that Villaging isn’t simply about creating more opportunities to be together. It’s about discovering how to become more available to the actual lives of other people, and how to let them become more involved in ours.

The beautiful trouble of needing each other

For those of us raised on the virtues of self-sufficiency, this can be surprisingly difficult. Offering help may feel wonderful. Asking for it may be terrifying. We may enjoy being generous but become uncomfortable when someone else’s needs are inconvenient. We may long to be included while fiercely protecting our independence.

And we don’t all come with the same circumstances. Some people have partners, children, extended families, or long-established networks of care. Others live alone or are building belonging without those structures. Some just have more time, energy, money, or capacity to offer than others. Those differences don’t disappear because we share a beautiful vision. They become part of what we have to learn to navigate together.

What would it take to make room for our different needs, our limits, gifts, and longings without expecting everyone to want the same kind of village?

Maybe Villaging begins there: with a willingness to encounter the people who are actually here.

More than a social club

I love a good gathering. Especially if it involves soup, music, and some serious goofiness. But I’m increasingly interested in what happens afterward. Who checks in when someone is having a hard week? Who can receive help without having to earn it? How do we share responsibility without turning care into another job for the most willing person?

How do we make room for the ordinary friction of shared life—the misunderstandings, differences, disappointments, and uneven capacities—without giving up on one another or pretending everything is fine? And how do we preserve the pleasure of being together?

Because Villaging isn’t meant to be a grim assignment in mutual obligation. There should be laughter, beauty, mischief, and the unexpected gifts of other people’s company. The joy matters. So does the responsibility. Perhaps village begins to grow when both can belong.

An invitation to experiment

Villaging is one of the practice fields of Humaning, an exploration of what it means to become more available to life. Here, the inquiry turns toward interdependence: learning to need and be needed, to offer and receive care, to share responsibility, and to discover what becomes possible when our lives become more consequential to one another.

I don’t have a blueprint for how to create village. I’m experimenting with friends, noticing what nourishes us and what doesn’t, and learning how much harder, and more interesting this is than organizing another potluck. I’m curious about what it takes to move from getting together toward belonging to each other, as something we might practice, imperfectly, in the places where we already live.

One ordinary Tuesday at a time.