We were created tribal

An article in Salon highlights how America's "cultural glorification of individualism & freedom" has cut the ground out from under our families. The author focuses on the impact of families with children, but the same is true of people dealing with aging loved ones, or striving to manage growing older all alone.

The author thought she'd prepared herself for the challenges of raising a child without Grandma close by, an aunt to help out, a best friend to step in during an emergency.  She had all the supplies, the great babysitters lined up, the requisite emergency numbers on cell phones, on speed dial, posted on the fridge.

Everything for the baby was taken care of - she just forgot about taking care of herself.  She was unprepared for the "crushing loneliness," the dependency on her husband, on kindly strangers - for the unfathomable loss of simple connection.

What is true for coping with babies & growing families can be even more intense dealing with aging parents, especially when there is a distance.  Some children move back to be close to loved ones, some have the aging other move close to or in with them, some travel to help resettle the distant older other(s) into a senior residence or full-service eldercare community or some other, bleaker option & then do their best to stay in touch via phone/e-mail/Skype/visits.  
  
The stress on the young'uns is matched by that on the elderly.  What was once a web of support for our families is now too often tattered, ends fraying, rips & tears throughout.

The myth seems entrenched in American culture, but it's simply not true.  Not now, not ever.  Humans are not made to be rugged individuals.  Frontiersmen, pioneers - yes, those few hardy souls & their modern ilk need to be able to strike out on their own, but they are the rare exception.  The rest of us need the closeness of relations & friends, the support of community, the priceless sense of connection.  

This past weekend, I was at a retreat in countryside once filled with farms.  A century ago, community included the people on each farm, the villages, the small towns.  

Weekly, they gathered at the feed store, the post office, at their different churches.  Their children went to school where they had, where many of their parents had attended.  Villagers often could guess a child's parent or grandparent, just by looking at his or her face. 
  
A century ago, that closeness was being to fray at the edges as the in-full-swing Industrial Age made transportation from city to city, from area to area easier than could have been imagined a century before.  In a year or so, farm boys would leave home to fight the hated Huns, coming back changed in ways their fathers, perhaps veterans of the Spanish-American War, and grandfathers who fought in the Civil War could scarely imagine. 

As America became more & more industrialized, increasingly concentrated in & around big cities instead of scattered across the land on farms, we became increasingly isolated.  Levittown paved the way for farmland being bulldozed & built over, replacing crops with cookie cutter houses, tiny yards, interlacing sidewalks & increasingly poor public transportation - two car garages were a major selling point, with the garage sometimes seeming to take on as much importance as the house.  

Children increasingly attended consolidated schools, going by bus because it was too far to walk.  Fathers faced often long commutes to work, while Mom had less & less to do at home, with vacuum cleaners & washing machines taking a lot of the hard labor out of keeping the house clean.

Today, our reality is that we've lost the bridges that kept our ancestors' lives sane & manageable.  Where are the bowling leagues, the neighborhood baseball teams?  When was the last time the majority of Americans heard of kids playing together, just for the fun of it?  Community dinners helped hold small towns, neighborhoods & church congregations together - aside from fund-raisers, they seem to have gone the way of the Dodo bird.

As for older loved ones - since the first "active adult" retirement community was introduced in 1960, segregating ages feels like it's more the rule than the exception.  "But how much better for Mom or Dad or Auntie Peg or Uncle Roy to be INDEPENDENT for as long as they can, in their own apartment with people their own age.  And when they need care, to know it will be readily accessible."

 

Bah humbug!  When I visit a "full-lifestyle senior community" & a group of young folk goes by or a resident's family, the energy lift is unmistakable.  Smiling, remembering the look of triumph I've seen on the faces & heard in the voices of older people basking in the glow of visiting family.  The happiness, if only at others knowing that younger folks care enough about them to at least visit, is palpable. 

We were created tribal.  Young mothers, parents dealing with the terrible two or even more terrible teens, middle aged couples squished between the needs of children & aging parents, those aging parents facing choices that can be daunting at best & diminishing at worst - they all need one another.  Not simply via Skye or a call - in the flesh, sitting across from us, sharing a cuppa & confidences.

Yes, I have friends who live on isolated ranches, far from their closest neighbors.  But that doesn't seem to effect their connection.  They come together to help one another with herding cattle, for 4-H events, for grange fairs & horse sales.  

I'm blessed to have a friend on a cattle ranch whose family & friends descend to help during branding!  They need to be tough, that's for sure, but rugged individuals they are not.  They survive & thrive on community.

 
Yes, I have friends who've managed to maintain close, supportive relationships with fathers on the opposite coast, with children in another country, with parents tucked away in an independent living facility.  But they have found ways to layer personal relationship with long distance connection.  Would all were like that.  Alas, they are as rare as they are precious.

We are NOT created to be rugged individuals.  We are crafted by the Divine to be in relationship, to live within communities, to give & get support as needed. We were created to be tribal, connected. 

Let's look at life's realities, at the present day challenges - which are real - and get back to the connected, caring communities we were meant to be. Without whining or weeping or wailing, without fretting about what was or commiserating on how those went before had it so much better, let's put our shoulder to the wheel, our arm around our neighbors & work our way back to where we're created for, what we're here to be.