Community's Not Optional

I spent the last five months in Costa Rica, stepping into a new world. If I've come away with one lesson, it's this: community isn’t optional.

The solution for modern challenges is simple. It's direct, face-to-face interaction. It's being able to walk out your door, trust the world around you, and connect with people you've built relationship with.

It's not social media. It's not anything you're going to find on a screen. Those are poor substitutes for connection — the same way a bag of chips is food, but is also a poor substitute for a real meal.

And if you want to frame screen time as an addiction — which is fair call these days, then social media is definitely a bag of potato chips. Fun snack, ok in moderation, has its place. But when we mistake it for a real meal, and keep coming back to it like it’s going to satisfy us in the way a real meal will, we’re mistaken, and we begin to starve for what we really need.

---

I spent most of my time in Uvita with my partner. Like many couples, we often prioritized being at home together over being out in community. Many times that was nourishing for our connection.

But sometimes, time together looked like watching more Netflix than usual… feeling uninspired… being bored… or simply feeling a general sense of dissatisfaction.

It really clicked for me when Jasmine left to travel and I was left to myself. For a few days, I basked in my own little kingdom.

And then I got bored. I felt uninspired about work, was eating poorly, and didn't feel like moving my body. I was scrolling social media and news sites, focussed on the problems of the world. A vague, familiar feeling had settled in — a shade of the depression I'd felt many years ago.

---

It was a strong medicine journey with Sassafras that showed me what was really going on. The bark of this tree is the natural source for MDMA — a medicine in the same family, working through the heart.

I worked with it intentionally, the way I always do with a medicine. I asked it to help me, and it did.

I felt elated during the journey itself, of course. How could I not? A deep connection to all of nature and a strong joy for life came easily, and I had an amazing day of surfing, singing, and moving in ways I'd been scared to move. Inspiration flowed naturally again, and I opened up years of neglect with my voice. The plant reminded me how much love I was capable of feeling for myself, the world, and others. It was a potent reminder, and was much needed.

But a journey like this — no matter how beautiful — is meaningless without integration.

In the days afterward, I felt hollow — not unlike the times in my 20s when I abused MDMA. I was bored, isolated, lonely, and drained.

Was this a hangover from a plant medicine? Had Sassafras triggered some kind of residual imbalance from my MDMA abuse? I was confused. Plants generally work very well for me, bringing helpful lessons, and almost always leave me feeling better than before.

I spent a few days feeling this way, unsure of how to move it. Over the years I've learned and developed many tools to work through challenging emotions, but this was sticky.

And then one day I finally pulled myself to a yoga class I'd been resisting. The movement was great and invigorating, but more importantly, I had pulled myself out of isolation. Just like that, I came back to life.

Sassafras was still very much alive in my body and being. And she was showing me the real source of both my depression — rooted in my isolation and screen time — as well as the source of my energy, inspiration, and zest.

It was connection with people. Pure and simple.

---

I took the next two weeks to play more with connection in community, and watched the effects on my psyche and spirit.

The days I stayed home, pushing myself to work on the computer and failing to interact with people in any kind of meaningful way, were laborious, long, and challenging. I numbed, coped, moped, and generally felt unsatisfied.

The days I got out and connected with people in community were full of zest, play, and belonging. This was the direct antidote to the depression that had been mounting.

And then I took it to the next level. I intentionally spent every day in community for the last week of my time in Costa Rica, bringing my work with me and pausing frequently to connect and play. That's where the real magic happened. On those days, I moved through more work than I had in weeks — and felt great about life while doing it.

---

I need community. I know this is true for me. And when I think about our evolutionary history as a species, it makes sense that it would be true for everybody — that it's part of our genetic makeup. In hunter-gatherer societies, being in community every day is the norm. Being alone may still form a necessary part of life, but it's not the default. The default is being and building together, supporting one another.

And, love them or hate them, churches served as a community gathering place. Until COVID and Zoom, the workplace was a given as a social gathering place too. Maybe dysfunctional, but definitely social. Where I grew up in rural Canada, farmers and neighbours helped each other out by default, because until pretty recently if you didn't, somebody could die in the cold. That’s still true, but now people pay for emergency roadside assistance. Most of us don't have natural predators anymore, so there’s no need to band together for protection. Most of us have groceries delivered to our doors, if not within a short walking distance, so there’s no need to gather and hunt, or work together to grow food. We have so much now that life has become very easy — and all of this is great, but it means we now have to intentionally choose connection.

Our default — the one millions of years of evolution built us for — is building and being together. It's not single men, uncertain of how to connect with women and fearful of other men. It's not single women, tired of men who don't get it. It's not single moms, doing it all alone. It's not the nuclear family in an inflated economy, struggling to make it work without support. And it's definitely not children isolated from peers of different ages, forced to sit still and defer to authority at an age where it's natural to run free, play, and learn through doing.

The price of our isolation is mounting higher every year. Fear, chronic stress, anxiety, and numerous chronic diseases have roots in patterns of behaviour that stem directly from emotional dysregulation. Mental health challenges build, while a dependency on pharmaceuticals to solve every woe has become the norm. And dopamine addiction is stealing the potential from every generation alive today.

Don't get me wrong. Social media has its place. So do all of the advancements we've created. But they are not a substitute for the foundation that shaped us as a species — community.

What if the cure for many of our modern challenges is simple?

I'm not saying it would be an instant cure. It will take time. Maybe even a generation or two. But I'd stake my life on it that it would work, because it's who we are.

I need connection. I need community.

How about you?