Cohousing-L Mailing List: You can have it both ways

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

 I realised that in my post I forget a key point, you can encourage and
allow members to follow their bliss, and also set some kind of minimum input
requirement. That way, people who want to spend 10 hours a week in the
garden can do so, even if the minimum is only 2 hours a week. 


Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Sandelin [mailto:floriferous [at] msn.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 10:16 AM
To: 'Cohousing-L'
Subject: RE: [C-L]_ consequences in community

In my opinon, based on 14 years of experience living in community and
visiting many others is there is  a tragic mistake made in too many
cohousing groups in terms of group work endeavors. The mistake is this,
equality vs. happiness. I think the ulitmate goal of any group context
should be to maximize the happiness of its members. This where rules about
work time tend to crash. I have a partner whose greatest happiness would be
to spend 8 hours in the community garden, weeding, tending plants, etc. She
loves gardening and would do it for hours and hours. If we were going to be
equal about it, we would need to have everybody do the same amount of hours,
or cut back on her hours. Neither course induces happiness. 

I have another neighbor who finds great joy in the presence and mentoring of
toddlers. She dotes on the them, and it is frankly wonderful for her and the
kids. She does not enjoy gardening at all. Why is it OK to force her to
garden in the name of equality? This makes no sense to me. She often
volunteers to be with toddlers while their parents do various communty
tasks, such as making community dinner. She loves this way to contribute.
Why does it matter how many hours she contributes? She does what she loves,
when she can. She is very happy living here. 

My first advice is to encourage people to find what makes them happy, and
then give them what they need to do that thing. If that means that one
person is doing 8 hours in the garden while another is doing 2 hours fixing
bikes, its OK. Find your happiness, and follow it. Then, clean the toilet
now and again not to fulfill some obligation, but because you want to give
service to your community, and if you do it, someone else can spend their
time following their bliss. If there are important things that don't get
done, bring that up to the groups attention and see if they get done. If a
regular and needful chore does not get done, then hire it out. Forcing
people to do things out of some obligation, in my experience, builds
resentment. In my community we have random work parties, that average about
once a quarter. During those days we have lots of fun and we end the event
with a party. At our last work party I laughed more than I have in quite a
bit, and a couple of folks, who love to cook,  made the whole group a
fabulous turkey dinner. 

My second advice is to measure yourself, not anybody else. If you are doing
more than you want to, cut back. If you are doing less than you want to,
find ways to do more. If your dad died, your sister has cancer and your dog
has rabies, don't guilt trip yourself. Life in community is a continuum,
measured over several years. If the world is setup at this time against your
participating as much as you like, it will eventually change and you can do
more later.  You also can not possibly know what are all the life factors
that determine your neighbors presence or absence within the context of
community work. To judge them, invites others judging you should your life
requirements change your time needs. Accept people for where they are, not
where you think they should be and your relationships will be better. 

My third and final bit of advice, find a way to say I love you to your
neighbors on a regular basis. This is easily done as a small act of service
and caring, such as a ride to the airport, chicken soup for someone with a
bad cold, making a wecome home banner when they return from vacation. It can
also be present in a warm and genuine thank you. Before he died we had a
neighbor who once a week brought us wonderful homemade bread, simply his way
to say he loved us.  The more of this that happens, the happier and stronger
your community will be. 

My personal choice is to live in a place where people are happy and care
about each other, and if the leaves don't get raked up right away, well....I
can live with that... Oh wait, Bruce is raking them up right now....


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Cohousing
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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