Why We Need Community (and How Digital Nomads Will Lead the Way!)

I all the time rolled my eyes and thought “what’s there to say? Neighborhood is vital, after all, it’s. However what extra is there to say?” ?‍♀️

It took me years to understand that not solely is neighborhood essential if you wish to develop into a digital nomad. Or begin a web-based enterprise. Or learn to knit, or study a language, or familiarize yourself along with your new ADHD analysis.

Or do the rest actually.

And everyone knows the outdated proverb:

If you wish to go quick, go alone. If you wish to go far, go collectively.

However solely lately, by way of studying about local weather change, feminism and capitalism amongst different issues, did I realise that neighborhood isn’t simply vital, it’s the answer to all of our issues.

Okay, possibly one a part of the answer to all our issues, however a very massive half (we additionally have to plant a shit load of bushes, dismantle the patriarchy and white supremacy, after which there’s Brexit…however you get the thought).

Right here’s why neighborhood is so vital.

What a Backyard Taught Me About Neighborhood (or the dearth of it)

For me, it began with a backyard.

Every time we go to my boyfriend’s dad and mom within the countryside we additionally get to get pleasure from their lovely backyard. It’s inexperienced and neat they usually have flowers, greens and even a pergola. An ideal English backyard actually.

However as a metropolis woman, I used to be stunned at how a lot effort and work went into this backyard all yr spherical. Watering the flowers (twice a day in summer time), garden mowing, pruning, trimming, digging, planting. ? You get the thought.

And one summer time day a number of years again, I used to be watering all of the flowers when it hit me. Proper at that second, there have been in all probability tens of hundreds of individuals within the UK alone, who had been watering their gardens. Hundreds of thousands everywhere in the world.

That’s a whole lot of amassed hours, by no means thoughts vitality and water. And ultimately, just a few individuals get to essentially get pleasure from their particular person gardens, they’re not public in spite of everything.

It made me sort of unhappy to consider this.

As a result of there are additionally tens of millions of people that don’t have a backyard in any respect, not even a balcony or entry to a park.

(In London, this will get rubbed in yearly when the “secret gardens” have an open day. On that at some point, us commoners are allowed to go to the personal gardens that solely a choose few have entry to.)

How Capitalism is Retaining Us Remoted

After all, what I’m speaking about right here is individualism and this is only one instance of it. Capitalism works greatest after we people are as remoted as attainable.

Why?

As a result of we spend more cash that manner. Easy.

If individuals dwell by themselves or in small nuclear households, then everybody wants their very own backyard and lawnmower. But additionally their very own washer, and automobile, and vacuum cleaner and microwave and TV…

You get the gist.

And never solely does this apply to materials issues, but in addition to time and vitality.

Dad and mom of small nuclear households should pay for baby care as a result of they haven’t any assist community to assist out. That is extraordinarily costly. Seniors should spend their life’s financial savings to pay for outdated age houses as a result of no person is there to assist them, we’re all busy working and paying for our individualist lives.

In case you get too outdated to take care of your backyard, you must pay for a gardener.

And on prime of that, loneliness and isolation are additionally massive enterprise for giant pharma, as a result of individuals have by no means been extra depressed and anxious ever earlier than. Loneliness was categorised as a pandemic, even earlier than this pandemic (no pun meant).

This implies individuals pay for meds, but in addition for remedy and all types of different assist, from self-help books to private improvement seminars and wellness retreats.

We’re even too busy to cook dinner for ourselves now, that’s why prepared meals, take out and pre-packed meal choices are so well-liked. We every have a giant kitchen to ourselves, however no time or vitality left to truly use it to cook dinner 3 meals a day.

And within the on-line enterprise world, that is no completely different.

We’re all making an attempt to forge our personal paths, we every should pay massive bucks ? to the “consultants” so we are able to “steal their secrets and techniques”. When in actuality we don’t want one other $5000 course or $15000 mastermind. We want a bloody neighborhood.

Why Neighborhood is the ‘Secret Ingredient’ We’re All Lacking

We’re lonely and operating a enterprise is admittedly onerous. It’s too exhausting to determine all of it out ourselves, maintain ourselves accountable, keep productive and make tons of of selections.

That’s why we so fortunately half with massive sums of cash when an knowledgeable comes alongside who sells a simple copy-paste answer. However they rarely work after all. ?‍♀️

So yeah, I actually do consider {that a} aware shift away from individualism in the direction of a contemporary and sustainable manner of communal dwelling and dealing is what’s going to avoid wasting us from local weather change, loneliness and the destruction of our finite pure sources and our psychological well being.

As a result of it actually does take a village.

To lift a child. To run a enterprise. To do something significant really.

And one of the best half about all this?

Us digital nomads are a number of the people who find themselves already figuring this out. Which is sort of counterintuitive when you concentrate on it.

As a result of the stereotypical digital nomad is a single 20-something minimalist, geared up solely with a laptop computer, a backpack and a passport. They’re sort of loners, every on their very own particular person paths.

However in actuality, what I’m seeing increasingly more is that this “conventional” manner of being a digital nomad isn’t sustainable and even fascinating. In any respect.

Most nomads shortly really feel lonely, burn out, or get jaded, and infrequently go dwelling.

How (& Why) Digital Nomads are Constructing Communities

However the ones who hold going and do that for some time? All of them find yourself working, travelling and dwelling communally in a method or one other.

Why in any other case would there be coworking areas popping up like mushrooms everywhere in the world? And why would we really pay cash to share an workplace with others?

And why achieve this many nomads spend a whole lot of time at coliving areas and even opening their very own? Why are there so many digital nomad communities, conferences, occasions, retreats? By no means thoughts van life, tiny home communities, home sitting.

We’re all onto one thing.

All of us realised that the outdated status-quo wasn’t working. We had been sad with our work, lack of life-work stability and the infinite hustle and poisonous productiveness.

However I might say that almost all of us weren’t actively conscious but of how a lot we’re missing neighborhood after we determined to develop into nomads. It’s one thing that begins crystalising as soon as we hit the highway and go away our present neighborhood and assist community behind.

That’s after we realise the significance of neighborhood, and the way a lot it’s lacking within the fashionable world.

So yeah, I do assume that neighborhood goes to avoid wasting the world. Not in a single day, however in the end sure.

The place Do We Go from Right here?

The important thing to that is creativeness. To be able to construct this communal world, we now have to first think about it.

Sadly, our creativeness has been so hampered by our capitalist, hustle society with 15-second consideration spans and 24/7 information cycles stuffed with doom and gloom, that we have to begin flexing our creativeness muscle tissues consciously.

We are able to do that by way of studying, writing, journaling. And speaking to different individuals about what a greater world may appear to be. (Btw, a must-read is The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres).

Personally, I’ve been dreaming of a communal tiny home village for years now and I hope at some point I’ll make this, or a model of it occur. And I received’t have the ability to do it on my own after all.

Within the meantime, I’ll put all my time and vitality into reminding those that we’re social creatures and that capitalism has destroyed our communities.

However that it doesn’t should be that manner and that we are able to actively rebuild our communities, regionally, globally, just about and in-person.

I additionally assume that ladies will play a key half on this.

And for the primary time in a very long time, I’m beginning to really feel a bit extra hopeful concerning the future once more.

In case you’re fed up of going it alone and wish extra assist, then be a part of us within the The Lab! We’re a digital neighborhood of location unbiased ladies who assist one another in enterprise and life, and we’d love so that you can be a part of us!