This vow I will make

Dear future hubster,

it might be a little late for New Year's resolutions, but since I usually don't make any, this is as good a time as any. And starting over new doesn't have to happen in January; winter is for hybernation anyway, as most mammals know, who don't force themselves to respond to emails and produce GDP as we humans do.

And this is not even a starting over new situation, it's something that has been mulling and simmering for quite a while now.

Being a villager, that is. A member of that proverbial village that "it" takes. We never quite define what "it" is, do we? It takes a village to raise a child, that's how I think the original saying goes. But probably the child is proverbial and at that symbolic too. It takes a village to do anything, to get anywhere, to not go it alone. Especially when you live away from your original community, your family, your childhood friends, and/or if you, like me, have moved around a bit too much. 

The village is your survival in the most mundane, unromantic, boringly practical sense. The village tells you which store is open on Sundays. They will get you a dentist who can see you immediately. Call a car mechanic when you have a flat tire, move your new yet secondhand closet up to the third floor. Give you emergency painkillers from their drawer. They will also hang out with your not proverbial child for a few hours if and when needed.

The village is also your survival on more metaphysical levels. It has somebody you can confide in, somebody who can give you advice, somebody whose sofa you can sleep on when you're too afraid to go home.  Somebody to proofread your CV, to lend you a tie for your job interview, to gently but firmly push you towards finishing your thesis. There will be shoulders to cry on, hands to hold yours in crowded rooms, messages to check if you got home safe. 

The village is not there for you individually. Not because you're not that special, but because all villagers are. The village, perhaps selfishly, is there for itself, one for all, all for one and all that.  What any one person gives and takes on any one day is not reciprocal or equal, but on the grand scale of things it balances out. It's not a production line where you always have to provide a certain amount; you give what you can and you get what is there.

Because of that, being a villager is inconvenient sometimes. "You give what you can" is not always the same as "you give what you feel like giving". Sometimes you have to go out in the rain, wake up early, sleep on a couch, go to a game on Friday, or miss a game, carry an extra bag, listen to the same story for the 15th time.  

And there, in that inconvenience, the nice cozy village becomes bigger than itself. To do something for others, intentionally, systematically, when we'd rather chill at home, is where community and care become radical. Political, if you like. When you show up for people even when you don't think they are useful for you, when you look to give even when you don't look to take, when you don't resign because it's too hard - you stand for something other than yourself. You hold yourself responsible for what you have tamed.

You will have to keep making that choice, intentionally, systematically, regularly. Hell you probably have to preach it to others too. Being a villager is a whole lot of work, and it never gets completed. 

Why do it then? 

Because the village will stand for you too. It will show up for you, it will carry you. 

And make no mistake, dear future hubster: nobody else will. All we have is each other.