Summary
Joe and Brett discuss what real community looks like, sparked by a grief ceremony they held for someone in their community who lost a child. They contrast this healing, non-judgmental experience with the typical dysfunction of funerals and conventional “community” where people give advice, try to fix each other, or require conformity.
Joe defines functional community as a place where everyone understands their health is tied to the health of the community—where problems aren’t “yours” but “ours.” This requires transparency, vulnerability, impartiality, non-judgment, and emotional welcoming. He notes that real community is incredibly rare in modern society, with Americans averaging fewer than three close friends.
They explore what scares people about deep community (being truly seen, vulnerability, identity dissolution) and what draws them to it (being loved unconditionally for who you are). Joe offers practical advice: seek existing communities with depth and acceptance, or cultivate community by practicing vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder as a way of life.
Key Concepts
- Individual health is tied to community health
- Real community requires non-judgmental witnessing, not fixing
- Deep community is scary because it dissolves identity
- The loneliness epidemic stems from never seeing healthy community modeled
Key Quotes
“In the most functional sense of the word, the community is where everybody understands that their health is tied to the health of the community.”
“If there’s a marriage in trouble inside of the community, the community supports that marriage… because if a marriage is having trouble inside of a community, it is a reflection of something else happening inside of the community.”
“What I want is a place where I can be loved for who I am, where I’m at in this moment. And if I had that sense of community… anybody who tastes that, they’re just like, I want that.”
“Imagine you were dropped onto an island and there was 12 people who unconditionally loved you… who are you at the end of that decade?”
“If every person in America had witnessed when their parents had problems that 10 or 12 other couples came around, sat in a circle, witnessed the mom letting out everything, the dad letting out everything… everybody would want community.”
Transcript
[Music] hey Brett how you doing Joe I’m doing really well I that that thing we did yesterday was so fulfilling it was so uh heart opening and wonderful and uh yeah I’m still just basking in the glow of that yeah it was beautiful for for some context we we had a grief ceremony yesterday for for somebody in in our community who recently lost a child and uh it was just really really tender really moving and there were in the final sharing circle around it it was just amazing to see how much kind of unexpected value people got from it that was Far Beyond just the expectation of like we’re grieving this loss and and I think part of what was part of what was behind that is just that there were so many different different experiences happening in the same place yeah and and there was a sharing of it and a support that uh yeah that’s just something I really want to have in my life yeah it was an amazing it was an amazing situation because you know so for a little context here a person who had been in one of my courses that you were in like five years ago or something I hadn’t heard from Forever called up and talked to me about the death of um his child and I immediately was like we need to mourn together as a community and in my head immediately I was like this is something that’s important for the community and it’s important for them um I think in their mind it was something like we were doing for them and there was like notable hesitation and and when speaking his wife didn’t really know the community and so she was kind of coming in blind and I called beforehand and what was really clear was that like so many people who have had a loss like the funeral and that whole experience just kind of sucks um you know people are you know trying to make them feel better which is not helpful and or wanting them wanting to experience their pain as a way to or their sadness as a way to like be able to purge their own sadness and there’s this feeling of obligation of the person who is Mourning and and like they’re supposed to take care of people emotionally at least and there’s just all this stuff that happens and so I I was very clear with her like this like no all that there’s no obligation here and I’m going to be really clear upfront and our community generally knows this anyways that it’s like not about trying to make you feel better and it’s not about having you feel the emotions for them that it’s about everybody feeling their own grief and it was amazing how at the end of the ceremony it really wasn’t about them it was about them primarily but it was also about everybody else’s healing that they got to go through and how their story and what they went through healed the whole community and and I remember just seeing this moment of you know she came into this thing blind not knowing people and then then when she saw other people grieving and feeling the pain it immediately let her know she was in the safe place instead of like oh are you okay it was like I feel you I am with you and you could just see that like oh okay she saw that this was a safe place and it was amazing and it just made me really proud of the community um that that has that that I get to be a part of that some to some degree surrounds this work but not only that and yeah I was just I was really stoked by and I was really I was really excited to be able to talk about it today since it was so fresh on my mind yeah yeah one one thing that that struck me was just the the difference in the feeling from like many funerals that I’ve been to and this particular this particular moment and there’s a way that we could go into a grief ceremony and what made it different but also there’s just the overall like the community component here that I want to stick with so I want I want to talk about what do we mean by by Community here because there’s there’s a lot of people out there with a group of friends and right a lot of those friends may also be feeling a deep loneliness and not feeling a sense of community and there’s a lot of talk about community in in my circles lately and yeah also a lot of confusion about what exactly it is in the most functional sense of the word the community is where everybody understands that their health is tied to the health of the community that their job is to um help the community be healthy because it is a reflection of and an influence on their health meaning um if there’s a marriage in trouble inside of the community that the community supports that marriage um because if the if a marriage is having trouble inside of a community it it is a reflection of something else happening inside of the community and to help make that marriage functional or to heal that marriage or to heal whatever is there maybe it stays or doesn’t stay as a marriage but to help heal that process also heals the community it heals everybody inside of the community and so for that for that kind of a community to exist there has to be a tremendous amount of transparency a tremendous amount of vulnerability um a a good deal of impartiality so it’s not what we have in our society often is like somebody judging you know like I have my community and they’re telling me how to be happy or they’re telling me how to save my marriage but they’re not being with me in it they’re not they’re not actually like witnessing and experiencing my marriage with me in a non-judgmental open loving way and there’s safety and so in a community it’s about having that full vulnerability but not getting it faced with judgment or advice it’s it’s being with you and and and somebody seeing that it’s not not your issue because your marriage is bad it’s the community’s issue and so they’re listening to it like without that judgment I think that’s what really great Community looks like yeah yeah and also the layer of what they make it mean because if there’s a if there’s a problem if there’s a if there’s challenges in a in a relationship within a community does the community make that mean that something’s wrong and it needs to be fixed such that they the conflict stops and then it becomes an oppressive Community or right right yeah not that or is it a bunch of avoidant people being like yep there’s whatever not my monkeys that’s been my role traditionally when there’s been some kind of stuff like that in a community I’m just like okay you handle that right not my pig not my farm yeah yeah yeah yeah so the the not a sense of obligation but also a commitment to the health of the people in the community with and this I feel really is really important with impartiality and I guess we could say view in general yeah yeah and and it’s and it’s I think the the Nuance which I said there is like it’s not it’s not other meaning it’s not like I am I’m I am they are committed to their health it is that is a reflection of this community’s health meaning like oh if that marriage isn’t doing well healing that marriage doesn’t just heal the marriage it heals the community because it’s it’s a reflection of something happening inside of the community as well so it’s it’s seeing all the issues in the community as our issues as my issue instead of as like their issue and I think that’s and when you feel when you get that sense like at the ceremony yesterday you got that sense of everybody was healed by this community was Stronger by going in into this morning together and sharing these stories together they they were happier they were healthier but everybody was and the whole Community was strengthened by it and there’s a bond in that Community because of it yeah one one thing that I think is key here is that that yes anything that’s going on in the community is a reflection of the community but not in a way that like oh you’re reflecting poorly on the community but or in a way that I am responsible for fixing this thing with you because I am the community but rather it’s that oh there’s something going on in the community how can I work on the the reflection of that in myself yeah such that I can show up to it fully and how do how do I you know like in my case it was hey let’s do a morning ceremony and like how like how hey can the community come together and support you and your wife how do we do that and these are tools that I don’t think most people have or most communities have how do we come together as Community to support somebody in a way that isn’t judgmental isn’t trying to fix isn’t partial it isn’t a way of like hey let’s witness and be in this together so that nobody feels alone and so that everybody can see themselves more clearly yeah okay so given given how we’ve just sort of described Community how often how often do you see this form of community in our society now oh wow relative to something else I mean I’m lucky I get to see it a ton Tara and I were just talking the other day and the fact that um we were laughing we were like yeah people maybe they come because of Tera you know maybe because of the podcast that’s why they come into this work but they stay because of the community you know that like it’s people wanting to be a part of this depth and support you know and and so we do a weeklong we do a weeklong event and then we find out that that group of people have been like in communication for five or six or seven years I mean this was a five-year-old Community uh and like so many people showed up for it so in the morning thing so I get to see it a lot but in society I see it it’s incredibly rare you know there’s some men’s groups that have it or women’s groups that have it there are you know some very tight 12-step programs that have it there’s um some churches that have it um there are some Churches who have dysfunctional communities as well so there are some places some sanghas you know some Buddha sanghas that have it but that it’s a pretty rare thing for it to be deeply vulnerable and that sense of oh this is this is us this isn’t me or you this is us so it’s it’s an incredibly rare thing and if you look at the statistics it’s just like the number of friends that the average American has is like shrinking all the time and I think I heard it was like under three recently like three friends um people that they thought they were close to um so and so many people have had like that funeral like had like a dysfunctional form of it that they’re just like yeah it’s easier to be in my phone or in my screen or it’s easier to not not feel it but like it’s like not working out you know you you it it takes a toll it like it it starts making you weaker and less resilient and it it it like it becomes a heavy weight on your system to not have it and and and it’s a pandemic as far as I’m concerned like there’s just this tremendous lack of community and I don’t even think people know it’s possible it’s one of the things that I saw when I was looking around the room of whatever it was 20 25 people there yesterday yesterday I was like there were some people who didn’t know our work or were weren’t a part of it and I could see how touched they were that this was possible that it was possible that we could come together and support each other in this way in which nobody felt obligation and nobody felt like they had to take care of each other yeah yeah and something you mentioned there was how how so many people report in like surveys as having like just two or three friends and in a lot of cases a lot of times I’ve seen a lot of times people have like two or three friends often those friendships are sort of like let’s hang out and watch Netflix together but we’re not really going to go deep into our stuff and and so like it’s it’s in the Zeitgeist right now that the the loneliness epidemic has been in the news and people are talking about it and so what is it what is it in your opinion that makes it that makes community in the way that we’ve been talking about it rare in society right now yeah I think a lot of it is just what you know what’s known what’s not known meaning like I didn’t know that this was possible growing up right so my experience of growing up was you had one or family had one or two family friends and there was things you talked about and there was things you didn’t talk about anything real you didn’t talk about anything fun you did talk about um there was no example whatsoever that it was even possible to be witnessed and loved in a non-judgmental way and when oftentimes when our Community has problems it’s people coming in telling them how they should be because what’s happening is they don’t want to feel something like I don’t want to feel the pain of the death of your child so I’m gonna say oh feel better to you or I don’t want to feel the fact that my marriage could fall apart or that financially I could be in trouble and so I’m just going to come in and tell you how to handle stuff and so the help that people experience from Community isn’t actually very freaking helpful so why the hell want it right like if all my only sense of community is that it’s very unhelpful why would I why would I think that it’s a useful thing if my only sense of community is that I have to look a certain way and I have to be a certain way and I have to feel a certain way to be accepted why the do I want Community I don’t want that you know what I want is a place where I can be loved for who I am where I’m at in this moment and if I had that sense of community and and as and as far as I have seen anybody who tastes that anybody I’ve ever seen who tastes that they’re just like I want that like it’s like water on a dry sponge but I don’t think there’s a lot of examples of it and I think there’s a lot of counter examples exactly yeah exactly the worst I was gonna say yeah yeah I think I think a lot of people have had experiences of community growing up that were that felt stifling to them maybe they were a form of community that had worked for the previous generation but for them just wasn’t working and so they might have just decided okay I’m just going to be better off going on my own path and then not finding new community right if if if for instance every person in America had witnessed when their parents had problems that 10 or 12 other couples came around sat in a circle witnessed the mom letting out everything the dad letting out everything witnessed the anger being released in a healthy way witnessed the the community um doing a forgiveness ritual for one for one another and and the community asking forgiveness for not supporting them better if if if they had witnessed people speaking their truth that is really hard to speak and being loved for it everybody would want Community everybody would want it and they would sacrifice money to have it and they would sacrifice power to have it because it is unbelievably nourishing and you know as soon as you see it you know it and I I cannot tell you how many people when they see it they’re just like yeah that’s the thing that I want in my life but instead they didn’t get that you know they got don’t talk about it give people advice you know act right for the Neighbors look good great yeah like yeah not healthy so so one thing I noticed is that when people have when people have like felt exiled by a community in in this way or felt the a long-term lack of community that’s just become kind of baked into the way that they see the world yeah that when they find real Community there’s a way that they’re scared of it and also deeply attracted to it at the same time often which can often lead to sort of attacking it a little bit to test it and then also like clinging to it um yeah so I want to kind of talk about both of those angles a little bit uh what what let’s start with what scares people about the the kind of community that we’re talking about here the kind where they’re seen yeah we heard it multiple times last yesterday right like yesterday last afternoon we so multiple people were like I letting this amount of love in is hard for me you know it’s scary because it it will rip out your identity like the comparative mind I’m this and you’re that and I’m not good enough or you’re better than I am or I’m better than you like that stuff doesn’t exist very long in the community like that so that’s scary um it’s also scary to be vulnerable generally like oh I’m going to be seen I’m going to get rejected I’m going to get pushed out I’m going to get ostracized so you have all the fear that came up your whole life with being real in front of people now shows up in this community yeah so I think are the main things that really scare people about the community is that oh I’m going to be deeply loved or I’m going to be deeply rejected um both of those are very scary because both of those are you know messing with our identities in a big way yeah I think another thing that happens is that when you when you drop the defenses that have kept you safe in the past there’s a lot to feel yeah and those defenses were there because feeling those things wasn’t safe so yeah there there’s sort of when when you’re in a group and your defenses aren’t necessary or they’re seen through or they’re loved in a way that was not previously experienced then it’s scary because you’re now in territory that was once dangerous yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s I mean so I think all of that I think the other thing that makes it um I think the other part of feeling everything that makes it scary is that you have to feel everything like all that stuff has to be felt and like one of the Hallmarks of a great Community is that everybody’s like they welcome each other’s feelings they’re not trying to fix each other’s feelings that’s what makes it really healthy is was like that deep welcoming of the of the emotional experience yeah and so what are some it’s going to come up it’s going to come up because I mean if you weren’t mourning yesterday and you were with 20 people who were mourning it’s a difficult place to sit you know it’s it’s not it’s not it’s not easy to sit with a whole bunch of people having emotions if you’re not willing to have the emotions you’ll get very agitated very you know judgmental and stuff like that yeah right so we just started talking about the signs of a healthy but we didn’t yet talk about what makes people love it yes so just go back to what makes people love it yeah okay so so what makes people love this this form of Community uh you know we are all we all want on some level we all want to be seen and loved for who we are and be met with non-judgment to be met with acceptance like if you’re listening to this right now and you close your eyes and you just ask yourself like what would it be like to be met with acceptance and loved for who I was and not have to put up a front like do you want that and I I can’t imagine somebody being like nope that sounds like no you know um there’s this great experiment that I used to talk about which was I called it the island experiment and it’s imagine you were dropped onto an island and there was 12 people who unconditionally Loved You Then they yeah they drew boundaries with you they they wasn’t like they were just accepting your behavior but they loved you unconditionally they accepted where you were and they loved you unconditionally and now if you imagine that you were stuck on that island for a decade right and you’re with these basic kind like Saint Saints almost like people who are just like in that kind of deep love like who are you at the end of that decade like where where you know where’s your fear where’s your love where’s your like how do you interact in the world how do you see yourself that’s why everybody wants it because they know if they’re met there what becomes of them they become the thing that they they truly are and and so I think that’s the thing that really pulls people and they and people can sniff it out it’s just so rare that it’s yeah speaking of sniff there’s not a lot of places yeah there’s not a lot of places to sniff for it yeah yeah and and speaking of sniffing for it what what are the signs of a healthy Community yeah I mean there are a lot of different communities out there and some of them can be dangerous and there’s a reason why people have been Have Become rather yeah hesitant about community and our society vulnerability top to bottom is a huge one emotional fluidity top to bottom of the community or side to side of the community are really important transparency really important part of a healthy Community a feeling of um that there isn’t us and them in the community it’s it’s just there’s an useness to it um as far as like if there’s a problem in the community it’s all of our problems it’s not it’s not your problem um is another really healthy aspect of a community um not a lot not a feeling of obligation that people aren’t acting in the community out of obligation they’re if they feel obligation they announce it and everybody realizes that nobody wants someone to act out of obligation that’s another great sign of a healthy Community um non-judgmental it’s not a judgmental there’s it’s not performative people don’t feel like they have to perform to be a part of the community um healthy boundaries you know very healthy clear boundaries about like how what this community is and isn’t when you know if if you want something no not like trying to hold people into the community and having a very thoughtful uh way of a of a community person leaving so those are some of the things that make like a community like a strong container yeah makes it something that’s really healthy and it can be less or more conscious I’ve seen very healthy communities that are not like all that conscious it’s not like Hey we’re in a community it’s just like there’s just been like a couple people in the community that are really great examples and you know and it can I’ve seen it in a small town once it was amazing to see that and where it was just like it just had become the culture it just had you know and I’ve seen some companies I’ve seen two companies have like a really great sense of community as well and I think it was really conscious to create that community on some levels of the organization but it was very unconscious and also in a lot of like so it doesn’t have to even be like hey we’re in a community and we’re doing this it’s something that can actually happen a little oddly a little bit unconsciously or not conscious to everybody in it yeah yeah I’m curious about some example sort of like boundaries as you describe about like what a community what this community is or isn’t or what like I guess there’s a spectrum here from from not not being consciously created to being very principled and very well defined yeah I’m kind of curious about a couple data points from that Spectrum yeah like yesterday I was really clear inside of that container it’s like there’s we’re not here judging each other and we’re not here to make each other try to feel better we’re accepting people for each other for how we feel and whatever is true for you and your feelings is what what we want to hear about and be shared and share that’s that’s like a boundary that the community if it was not that it would not have been a very healing situation for anybody let alone everybody so those are all examples of it um things just like lying probably would be another great boundary like yeah we’re not lying we don’t gossip you know we work out our issues if there’s problems between us we work it out and we work it out with witnessing those would be all potential boundaries that you would have yeah and I imagine another boundary might be that we don’t always work it out right now because sometimes we have other agendas of course yeah of course I need space but I will come back to it that’s yeah yeah and I for me I don’t like another boundary would be just like you no man can tell another man what to do or no woman can tell another man or woman what to do like there there’s a there’s a understanding that everybody is responsible for themselves um which is an odd Paradox but that we’re all responsible for the community but that only really works works when everybody is taking responsibility for themselves it doesn’t work when somebody is like feels like a victim to the community not taking full responsibility for their actions it doesn’t it doesn’t work both things have to be there all right so so I want to give people something practical that they can so they might go find Community but also a beautiful thing to do is just to cultivate Community Where You Are and like plant a flag and I’m curious what what people can do to to cultivate that in their lives whether it is to go find it somewhere or to plant the flag and start cultivating it on the spot yeah so I mean I remember like moving and going okay I need a sense of community and going and finding it and um the way that I did it was I just looked for any like I went to any place where I thought there was a sense of community and I looked for healthy ones that were communicative and deep and there was a lot of acceptance I went to 12-step programs for children of Alcoholics I went to yoga classes I went to book clubs I went to like and I just like until I found the place where where that that strong sense of community was in existence um so you know our courses is another example other people’s courses there’s lots of places where there’s just a that sense of community and so it’s just a trial and error get a get a feeling go where you’re interested but also like don’t stay long if you don’t feel this really tight sense of community um so that’s one as far as cultivating it yourself what I notice is that if you’re in view if you’re doing vulnerability impartiality empathy and wonder as a way of life not as a communication practice um but is like oh this is I noticed that that when I treat myself and others like this it’s my life is better then that will cultivate a sense of community there are some skills that you need for like the whole Community part of it right like like how to do a morning ceremony is something that you know you might want to look into like maybe the Quakers or East Africa has some really great ceremonies um so you might want to look into other people’s ceremonies and see what you can replicate or or the stuff that we do um but the core of it is that vulnerability impartiality empathy and wonder with each other and and cultivating that and learning those skills together is is a great way to to create that sense of community and what happens is that when you act that way because other people want a sense of community like it oddly it’s just more and more people come to you I mean I’ve seen you experience that in your life the more you’re there the more people come to you but not only do they come to you but they want to be there in that depth with you and so even if it takes some time it just it happens and it happens to everybody I’ve ever seen like deeply cultivate this is like when you know how to connect people want to connect yeah and in in my world I’ve noticed how like over the course of the past number of years Alexa and I have been really seeking to create community and earlier on it was like very Hands-On like okay let’s find the people that we want to have Community with we’re going to pull together and buy a piece of property you know and sometimes people do that and it works it didn’t work out for us in that particular instance and what ended up happening though is that we’ve ended up having Community around us because we did something like planting a flag we did something like just okay here’s here’s what we want and like we we kind of created a world where people could come around us and be around us and yeah we’re not like running or leading a community but what happened was that we started a bit of a center of gravity that has coalesced into into a beautiful sense of community that still of course has its figurings out and its challenges and its conflicts and what is this what is is this a community who’s in it what is it all this but there’s a lot of questions that just there’s a one thing that I can say to Define this community is that there’s a number of people who are sitting in the sitting in the questions a lot of the time and as a result there’s just a lot of support available and there’s a lot of gatherings and there’s a lot of there’s a lot of spaciousness to move things individually or as groups and with support and yeah it wasn’t top down created yeah yeah I saw it in your at your wedding right like that was a really strong sense of community it was incredibly transparent incredibly forthright incredibly like it wasn’t like oh let me tell you a cute story about Brett and Alexa it was like here’s some real stuff and and like you could just see that sense of of depth even in the ceremony it was yeah very clearly there whether there’s a structure to it or whether you call it a community or not there was a lot of people being transparent and supporting one another yeah yeah and it felt a lot of it felt very self-organized the the community aspect of it just the way people showed up makes makes the community yeah it’s I mean it’s our nature to be in community we’re like we’re not a we’re not a non-communal you know individual uh so solo uh species yeah yeah beautiful cool awesome yeah good to be with you good to be with with you yesterday yeah and I I just like I want to for those in the community that came yesterday I just want to thank you very much I was deeply touched and and and healed by the by the ceremony yesterday so I just want to thank everybody who showed up yeah all right thank you everybody for listening if you have any follow-up questions from this episode I’d love to hear them maybe we’ll do a community number two someday and uh you can reach out to us on it’s X now Plus Twitter um or in a circle Community or email or on our website artofaccomplishment.com