RE: Styles of Communication when times are stressful | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Rowenahc (rowenahccs.com) | |
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 07:29:12 -0700 (MST) |
This is a common reality with people, they operate under the unquestioned assumption that everyone is kind of like me, thus I should expect from them what I could expect from myself. This is described by Robert Nozik as "foundational thinking" in that you don't even question it, it is just the way you operate in the world. Obviously if you want closer relationships within the community, it is an easy step then to assume that if other people don't want the same thing, there is something wrong with them, or with the community as a whole. The intimacy level, and desire for intimacy will vary greatly in cohousing. This seems pretty normal from my perspective and I have learned the obvious: You can't force it on people that don't want it. There can also be a gender gap. Holding a women's circle and men's circle is one way to find support on either side of the gap. There are often folks who would much rather do hard physical labor, like digging ditches, than talk about their feelings. This is OK and is part of the balance of life in a large community. I have found a good course of action is to identify what makes yourself happy, and then put your energy into making that happen. If closer ties or community building is what you want, setup your own sharing circle in your house and let those that participate follow the path that it created. It seems to work well to hold at least three such events in sequence on a recurring time pattern to let those that really want it to rearrange their schedules in order to participate. So if you do just one, and only a few people attend, it may be the second time many more will attend as they adjust their schedules to make room for it. When you hold expectations of other people, you need to be able to look at yourself in the mirror very honestly and check to see if you are reflecting your own ego or needs upon other people without their consent. If you are very self honest, and do this check, and the answer is no, it is a reasonable community expectation that x,y and z happen, then you are in a good place to ask the community to honor it. But beware of your own biases based upon how you think the community should be operating. we cut back to every other week meetings. Then we cut back to 3 hour meetings and now we are down to 2-hour meetings every other week. Business meetings should be quite short for all the reasons others metnioned. The real time should be put into committee work so that by the time a formal proposal is presented to the meeting a lot of thought has already gone into it. If you have an email list, it can be very helpful in circulating ideas, getting feedback and identifying the sticky issues for further focus. Maybe I'm wrong, but 4 hours together a month (only 4 months into living together) as a community doesn't seem like a lot of time... I don't know how large your community is but trying to get everyone together to share extended time on a regular basis is probably more than can be acheived. It all sounds very stressful. Rather than concentrating on getting everyone together try and arrange things that will bring together those with like interests that are not necessarily to do with cohousing. As people get to know each other around enjoyable activities they will be better able to trust each other to get the business of the group done. I think our most important committee is the "Events" committee which arranges everything from pumpkin carving to hikes and camp outs to concerts, contra dances, poetry readings, Monopoly by the Fire on Fridays, and everything else you can think of! In my opinion, these events where people are having a good time do more to build community than all the facilitated discussions or structured circles you can think of. I'm frustrated because we're spending time on the superficial, business stuff....and ignoring the infinitely more difficult and more important interpersonal stuff. I'm scared that we will fall apart on the inside while our outsides finally get finished! I recall when our building got delayed and some of us lived for six months in our friends' spare room, or a two room apartment or some such miserable arrangement with all our belongings in storage! It was not a good time for community building! Even after we moved in we were all focussed on unpacking, fixing goofs in our own units and so on. No one had the time or energy for community building. It took almost a year for everyone to move in and resentments and fear to subside and we then had a dedication ceremony with drums, burning herbs, processions, speeches/prayers, the whole nine yards, intended to put closure to the trials of construction and allow us to move on. It's now two and a half years since we moved in (plus or minus) and for the most part we have become a community. So give it time and realize that until things settle down people will tend to be more focussed on the outside than the inside. And there will probably be a couple of people who just wanted a "safe" place to live who will never become an integral part of the community. As Rob said, people have different needs for intimacy and for working things out in the group. We had one situation where we heard that "everyone" needed to have special meetings to work it out. It turned out that there were perhaps half a dozen people who felt this need in differing degrees - but for them it was a genuine need and having a couple of meetings devoted to the issue enabled them to bring it to closure. Of course, such meetings need to be carefully monitored since they are potentially more damaging to relationships than doing nothing - sometimes things get said that can never be forgotten. For some people who are able to get mad, speak their mind and then just move on, such meetings are perceived as unnecessary and merely dragging things out! Both types of personality can and should be accomodated - different strokes for different folks. Being in a cohousing community does not imply that every resident must follow the same path or arrive at the same place. That's one of the attractions of cohousing for many people - community without conformity to a predetermined Way. You may want to have separate meetings to process personal issues and invite those who are concerned to participate. I assume you have someone who can lead this kind of discussion which needs to be carefully structured? So, my advice would be to accept that people will react differently to group demands. In every group there are "process" people and "project" people, and you need them both at different times for different purposes. Over time, each group will learn from the other and the result will be improvement in each approach, leading to "progress"! Good luck Rowenahc CambridgeCohousing March
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