3 Reasons Why Having a Community is Important

We are often told that the company we keep in our close quarters shape the type of person we become. With that being said, if we find ourselves hanging out with 5 hard workers, we are likely to be the 6th. Or if we tend to hang out with 5 slackers, then it is easy to assume that we might be a slacker as well.

Building and maintaining relationships with many people can be an extremely difficult task, especially if you are someone like me. I tend to take a lot of my relationships/friendships really seriously. I have learned the hard way that you can't please everyone and not everyone is going to be similar to you. We all are different in many ways.

However, we as human beings, are not meant to be alone. We thrive in a community. Since humans first evolved, we have always been better off together. Nowadays, you will see on social media that it is better to be on your own, but I completely disagree.

Although there are benefits to being in solitude, I still think that it is healthier for us to be apart of some type of community. In this blog post I will share with you three reasons why community is important.

Encouragement

The first, and what I believe is one of the most important, reason is the way having a community can truly boost your confidence and encourage you to go past your limits. Growing up it may not be a big deal when your parents give you a compliment or a pep talk before going to school or playing in a competition. But those small moments of encouragement hold so much more weight as you get older.

Life is not easy. And I thank God for the life that I live because I am more than certain that it could be much, much harder. However, some people around me can say things that sometimes help me to remember that I am strong enough to persevere through setbacks and challenges. Some of those words of encouragement can come from my friends or even strangers, but the words that impact me the most usually come from my parent figures.

Now that I am older, I have come to appreciate the encouragement I receive from my dad, my grandma, my aunt, or any other parental figures in my life, because I know that they truly mean it from the bottom of their hearts. Hell, they have seen me grow from infancy to adulthood. If I have been knowing another person from the day they were born to the age that they are now, then I would genuinely care about how they feel about themselves and what they are going through. I would only want to tell them things that will uplift them and encourage them to keep going in life.

Keeping that type of company around you for as long as you can is imperative. It helps me to remember who I am and what I am capable of. I am reminded that there are people who care about me even when my mind tries to trick me into believing otherwise. There is someone out there praying for me, encouraging me, and hoping that I succeed in life because of the community I was raised in.

Inspiration

Sometimes we can think that we are capable of doing everything by ourselves. I mean it would be nice, right? As a mainly introverted person, I would love to believe the notion that I wouldn't ever have to rely on others and I would be completely fine. However, that just isn't true.

Without the help of others, or even just interacting with other people, I wouldn't be the person I am today. This blog wouldn't even be a thing if I wasn't inspired by the people that have encouraged my writing journey.

I can get inspiration from the strangest moments because of the friends in my life. We could be just sitting around, talking about life, and something that they say may inspire me for the next month. They may not even have realized it unless I actually go and tell them after the fact.

That is how crazy life can be sometimes. Each and every one of us can impact each other in some tiny way, but that small moment could be like a chemical reaction and cause someone's life to completely shift. We all have the capability to inspire and positively impact someone else's life.

Drive

With all of that talk about impacting lives, it's ironic to think that as we get older we tend to almost lose touch with some of our earliest relationships with people. Why does that happen? We often like to blame life. Saying things like, "oh I've just been so busy with my job" or "it seems like I don't have much time for anything anymore".

Even I have fallen victim to those excuses. However, in a lot of conversations that I have had this week, there's been a running theme that has been connecting my brain back to the concept of community. And I am starting to realize that the people in our lives can be our biggest assets. If we put in the work to pamper those relationships that are equally beneficial and don't let them dwindle away, then growing up and navigating through life shouldn't feel so daunting and lonely.

Our community can be our fuel. The people that want to see you grow and succeed will do whatever they can to help you. Our community, in a way, is where we can get our drive, especially when there are days that we don't feel like going any further, The people around us will provide us with the exact encouragement we need to bring the light of inspiration back into our eyes and give us a little push so we can obtain our drive again.

Summary

I am 23 years old now and I still have so much to learn about realizing how valuable a community really is. I'm laughing now because I started this blog because I wanted to create a virtual community, but I have been forgetting the community I already have in real life. Of course, I still want a virtual community because without someone else doing this exact same thing, I wouldn't have ever thought to create my own blog. However, I will remember to nurture as many relationships in my life as I can.

We do not have to go through life alone. The people around us can be our greatest assets and help us get much farther in life than we can alone.

I want to encourage, inspire and hopefully provide you readers a little bit of drive to go and reconnect with somebody that you believe you should reconnect with in your life. Yes, everyone is busy. Everyone has a life. But if everyone becomes so self-centered, the sense of community will disappear and we all will feel alone.

Go hug someone, my readers, and tell them you love them and that you are here for them.

Until the next post.

Jefferson K. Coe