Communities

Communities are an integral facet of life in general. I understand it to be a broad term that refers universally to interaction between living organisms. As a result, I have notions of community that are marginal (indirect influence) and also those that are central (direct influence) to my consciousness. Note that I do not claim that this dichotomy is universal but merely personal. To be cogent, the lists will include communities that have a vast range of richness of influence. This means that I must include all instances of community that are thus central (communities I spend the most time in) and marginal (communities I spend small amounts of time in) to my consciousness.

Central communities:

-Lila D. Bunch Library

-My three roommates that I live with in the Berry Hill area in a 4 bedroom house. Give or take 3 or 4 other "regular" visitors as well as what I will dub "stragglers" (friends you barely see, or sometimes see regardless of how much you enjoy their company) or just plain strangers.

-The central communities (for this purpose we will aggregate the individuals) that are most abundant in richness of influence are the personal relationships with individuals that we call "close friends". For my own privacy, I will not delineate any of my personal relationships.

Marginal communities:

-Belmont University students I encounter during convocation hours, "walk-by's", "drive-by's", waves, Facebook communication, and at arbitrary social gatherings around Nashville.

-Any discussion of theology or church I happen to attend in the coming months.

It seems to me that any of the communities that I listed where there are individuals with authority there are also rules. With expectations, it seems like they occur most in social gatherings and personal relationships. These lists will be much less detailed than the lists of communities and only include central ones because rules and expectations can be superfluous at times.

Lila D. Bunch Library: A blanket statement of my rules would be to obey every possible instruction of the Library Student Worker Handbook, the Circulation Manager, and the Assistant Librarians. More specifically, when closing the library, I am to turn off the “white-labeled” switches of the circuit breakers that are on the first, second, and third floors. I guess the principal here would be to secure the building from any kind of break-in. This is a rule that is very easy to obey because it is a simple, quick task that takes hardly any thought or effort. It could, however, come into conflict with another rule that is not to turn the lights off on a floor that someone is still on.

My "house" community: I consider things like pay the bills and the rent on time to be the only actual rules, though they might be rejected as such by some of my roommates, our stragglers, and our strangers. Expectations in this category will be tremendously excessive to list because of their sterile nature. The principles behind the rules that I acknowledge in our house are based on respecting each other and not financially harming or burdening each other. Mutual goodwill and respect are key principals in establishing personal relationships.

Personal relationships: As I said, true personal relationships are reflected by mutual goodwill and respect. There are no rules. There are only expectations. This is because true friends do not judge or punish each other out of said goodwill and respect. This means that true friends will avoid conflict by diminishing their expectations. Exercising goodwill and respect tremendously affects my behavior in personal relationships. This causes me to have to compromise my own will with that of the other person just to avoid conflict. Compromises are made in easy circumstances such as choosing where to eat out on the weekend, or in difficult circumstances such as attending a friend’s wedding that you dread going to because of the people who will be there (understandably). Or if a friend asks you to “pray” with them although you feel awkward about the request.