#16 - Who would know you were missing?
Why we need overlapping forms of care and connection.
Untethered is about disconnection. About how we find ourselves disconnected and why. It is an attempt to explore this subject with nuance, recognising that painting disconnection as “bad” and connection as “good” overlooks many of the very valid reasons that people choose to disentangle themselves from webs of relationship.
I also attempt to unpick the context of our disconnection by exploring the unseen drivers under the surface of our culture (such as how our self-perception is shaped by the economic context we live in) rather than just hysterically shouting “it’s because sMaRTpHoNEs!”
As I’ve done so, I realised how often I use the phrases care and connection interchangeably. Not because they are the same thing, but because it could be argued that connection is a gateway to true care, and many of the same hurdles we face in fostering a network of care are the same reasons we struggle with disconnection in the first place.
All this to explain that in an effort to save your eyes (and my fingers), I’ll sometimes just use C&C in lieu of “care and connection”.
But now, to the thing I was supposed to be writing about…
Has anyone seen Shane?
Who would know you were missing?
This question is always with me. Not because I am particularly paranoid about getting kidnapped or lost on a hike. Rather, it’s most likely because I grew up in a faith tradition that, for all of its faults, always invited me to pay attention to who wasn’t there. There was an implicit understanding that for every person at the party, belly full, warming themselves by the fire and feeling included, there may also be someone out in the cold, struggling to find their way in.
I have written earlier about the administrative burden of care and connection, and the hurdles we have to navigate full schedules, busy calendars, and in a world where paid work most often gets the right of way. This has led me to think about how we administrate care and connection. And I say this as a person whose organisational skills are an act of sheer necessity, not natural gifting.
For the sake of this discussion, want to look the administration of care and connection in three forms: ad-hoc, scheduled and collective.
Ad-hoc:
This is C&C that’s organised to meet a specific need when it arises. It’s the “wanna catch up Friday for drinks?”, the “how are you going post breakup?”, or the “I heard you fractured your wrist in that particularly vigorous crocheting session, do you need me to walk the doberman?”
Ad-hoc C&C is gold, and has an incredible capacity to meet us where we’re at. But it has challenges: It requires someone to notice, or someone brave enough to reach out, and it depends on people following through. It also most often requires an already established network to call on.
Because by nature, ad-hoc C&C is a one-off, each incident requires making space, finding energy, and being organised each time. Needs must be recognised, responses negotiated, schedules aligned, and check-ins initiated. This doesn’t mean that it’s always particularly burdensome, but there’s a reason we can only squeeze so much of this into the chaos of our lives.
Scheduled:
These are the recurring practices/activities/events that you organise once, put in the calendar, and practise regularly — perhaps monthly dinners amongst friends, a Friday morning run with colleagues, or weekly childcare offered by grandparents.
It can be tricky to keep these rhythms running, but when they are, they can be a nourishing and predictable way of being present in each other’s lives and require relatively less administration.
Both ad-hoc and scheduled forms of C&C are great; both meet particular needs in our lives. But also share a few major weak points.
They have fairly large degrees of frailty simply because of the small numbers involved: wherever you have a one-to-one connection point, or just a few people involved, it only takes a couple of things to fall through, and it can all fall apart.
They also most often require cultivating and maintaining relationships across some form of distance. In order to get together, to notice each other, to see and be seen, means doing all the background work to ensure that people can, will, and do show up at a particular place at a particular time. When thinking about community, I feel we greatly underestimate the power of physical proximity and all the incidental contact and connection that comes with it.
Both also most often rely on being on the inside of a closed circle. Of course, there are many good reasons that we gather in familiar groups, most often with people we actually like, but it doesn’t take much to fall out of the loop. No matter how much you like Friday night drinks with coworkers, keeping these relationships up when you leave that job can be tricky. I know people who still see their University/College friends regularly, but as we change suburbs, states, and countries, the possibility of showing up for each other in the flesh becomes increasingly unlikely.
I have spoken to many people whose once vibrant social circles have slowly whittled down to themselves, their partner, their cat and their streaming service. We have been trained to put all of our eggs in the basket of “people we like, people we know, people just like us”. But if that group shrinks for any reason, it can be difficult to replace.
Lastly, both of these forms of C&C fit into the margins of our lives. What I mean by margins is the space around the work, experiences, and recovery that fills the rest of our lives. That which exists in the margins is the most likely to get cut.
For example, it's far more likely that we will skip social activities because we are too exhausted from work than it is that we’ll miss a work deadline for a project that's running over so that we can be present with a friend who's feeling down. I’m not judging our personal choices here — we’ve all got to pay the bills in a culture set up this way. But the result is that the cumulative toll on our leftover energy makes flaking (sometimes in the form of necessary boundaries) more prevalent.
There’s nothing particularly concerning about these as singular incidents, but if you have ever tried to organise regular voluntary gatherings for connection, you might know that the percentage of no-shows or late-minute cancellations can make things super tricky.
It seems that no matter how excited we all are about forming regular patterns of connection, when it comes to the crunch, we often find ourselves out of juice when it comes time to actually make it happen. I've had numerous inspired and starry-eyed friends rally the troops for fortnightly dinners, and even while lowering the stakes as far as possible on the culinary front, I'm not sure any of them have lasted for more than two months.
While I think there are valid discussions to be had about the tensions between self-care and relational neglect (see this excellent quick read), I want to discuss a much more difficult but much more robust form of care and connection:
Collective.
Collective care and connection happen as a result of frequent proximity to a wider group of people who feel broadly responsible for each other’s well-being. It comes in many forms with varying degrees of organisation and obligation, but at its foundation, it relies on participation in a much broader network.1
It might be semi-formal, the kind of bonds that can form out of attending the same dance class or pottery workshop every week, where bonds are slowly formed, and you become more involved in each other’s lives to the point where a certain level of expectation develops.
It might be informal and determined by geographical location, such as a neighbourhood. If you know your neighbours, you might ask them to feed the cat when you’re away. Or, bumping into one in the street, you find out their wife is unwell, and offer to bring a meal in response. Perhaps you have elderly neighbours you check in on, or parents who call each other when they need emergency childcare. In my experience, even rituals such as shopping at the same stores, drinking at the same cafe, and visiting the same parks can foster vital forms of seeing and being seen by a wider group of people.
Another rant for another day, but this is one of the reasons I think we need to take the economics of the home ownership and rental markets far more seriously. Neighbourhood connection relies on stability. Every time we move, we must start from scratch, building trust with our new neighbours, and those who move into our old home must do the same.
Other collectives are more structured, organised and intentional, such as AA or Al-Anon, religious communities, childcare co-ops, and a bunch of others. At the foundation of these groups is some level of commitment to the well-being of the others involved, where there is interdependence fostered by a group — avoiding the fragility that comes from a “single point of failure”.
I have a lot to say about collectives (I can hear you gasping with surprise from here!), including where they can go horribly wrong, and a million reasons why life is so much more convenient without any involvement in them.
But.
But.
They are also capable of providing something that few other sources of care and connection can manage. One of their greatest assets is that they are less dependent on the singular efforts of individuals, precision calendar management, and each of us remaining attractive in the marketplace of relationships.
Collectives have the capacity to facilitate care, connection, familiarity, and trust by the magical power of persistent physical proximity. Incredibly, they can slowly connect you to people you initially had little interest in. I’m humbled to admit that some of my favourite humans were ones that took time to grow on me.
They can also metabolise deep need and sustained care by distributing them across the sheer numbers involved. And all going well, they aren’t derailed by a couple of individuals having life events. Collectives certainly aren’t flakeproof, but they can provide a level of durability that individual connections and smaller groups struggle to sustain.
There is great power in being able to show up and know that someone will be there, and you’ll be that someone for others. The inverse is true too — if for some reason you don’t show up, there’s a good chance someone will notice.
Intentional collective’s are a giant pain in the ass. Trust me, I work for one. And unstructured ones that rely on proximity have their challenges too — getting to know your neighbours can involve some strange characters and tedious conversations. But there is also the chance that they can grow into meaningful and resilient networks of care.
We need all kinds of care and connection, and none of them are without challenges, but it’s worth remembering that collective care has held humanity together for most of our history. Under the strain of hyper-individualism, capitalism and the transience of our age, we are losing the muscle memory of shared lives, and too many people are falling between the cracks.
More on collectives in the coming posts. Including introductions to some amazing writers on the subject. And in the meantime, it’s worth asking:
Where would you be noticed missing from?
Take care,
Shane.
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There are, of course, important digital forms of collective care, but for today, we’ll be focusing on the strengths and limitations of those that involve physical proximity.