Community

I'm working through some ideas bouncing around in my head about my friends and how I treat them. I don't believe in censorship, but this thought has come to mind, and it's hard for me to express fully.

On my floor, we've been talking a lot recently about what it means to live in an "intentional living-learning community," which, as the certified "Honors Floor" is what our floor is called to do. We're not a regular floor; we have a class we all attend together, we have programming, field trips, and a lobby that keeps us all closer than a regular floor usually is. Our dorm was designed to be different, and these discussions we've been having are about what that difference is supposed to look like.

There are a lot of problems with the idea of community at a college. My friend, Jasmine, on her blog asked the question is community really even an attainable dream at college? And I think, in order for the answer to that question to be "yes," we need to lower our standards of the definition of community. College is a very individualistic place by nature - you take your clases because they're going to get you your degree, and you share what you want to share along the road. People stumble in and out of relationships with varying degrees of closeness, everyone with different motivations and intentions. I personally hope the friendships I make here last a life time, but I know that some of them are bound to end at the graduation finish line. We're only here for four years, and our goals are so self-centered (not necessarily a bad thing in this case) that it's probably impossible to raise a family-like community, where everyone belongs to everyone else, everyone holds everyone else accountable, and everyone forsakes all others in order to live in complete, unadulterated, community.

Sometimes I wonder if that idealistic concept of community is even healthy. We all need community, but I feel like being able to have many separate and yet equally important communities in your life is essential to emotional health. Anyway, that's a different subject for a different time.

What I think community becomes in college, or at least what I hope it will become someday on 3rd van Reken in Calvin College is something less intense than that. It begins and ends with respect and love for everyone. Without much thought, I can think of a few people on this floor that I don't spend time with, people with whom I don't have much in common, and even a few people I don't enjoy being around. That's life. And it doesn't mean that we're not a community. I work to respect everyone here--(I fail miserably often, but, especially now, that just makes me try harder)--because no matter my feelings towards them or their beliefs, I know their worthy of at least my respect. I don't go out of my way to offend them or make them feel uncomfortable, and if I ever did by accident, I'd want to work that out with them. I hope they respect me in the same way, so that when our views simply clash, we can learn to disagree peaceably and not take things personally that aren't meant as such.

Sometimes, this respect means I have to sacrifice my "rights" in order to preserve community space. It's not permissible for my use of my freedom of speech to make someone else feel unsafe. This means making jokes or scathing remarks about homosexuals, suicide, evolutionists, feminists, just because it's funny or easy or because I'm angry is a right I willingly give up in community space. When people go to their dorm rooms or to our lobby, they should feel like home, and home should be comfortable and safe. If I want to speak out against homosexuality, suicide, evolution, feminism, or whathaveyou, I can do so outside that space. I can do so without harming the people to whom I've committed myself to for the year. They should always feel respected.

I'm not saying heated discussions won't happen, and I'm not saying no one's ever going to get angry at someone else, and I'm not saying that feeling won't be hurt sometimes in the process. I'm saying that respect is always what we strive for, and we approach some topics more cautiously than others. We always have to remember that there is a person behind a conversation, and lashing out, making jokes, and/or crushing people should not be allowed. We should discipline ourselves against it within these walls that everyone here calls home. Our first goal is not to make a point or get a laugh; it's to live together and respect each other.

Tell me what you think: whether I contradict myself, or if I'm citing impossibilities. I don't want to be passive agressive, so I'm trying to solidify my ideas as much as possible before engaging in conversation about them.

<3 spadeALLcross