When I was a traumatized teenager I thought the only way to be safe in the world was to close off all emotions and fight off attachments. Never let anyone in, take care of myself, hypervigilant hyper independence. If you never need anyone, they never have a chance to let you down. This strategy prevented some kinds of hurt, but created a lot of new ones. It hurt to be lonely, to have such a lack of connection. It felt terrifying to be out in the world without a net – there was no one I could turn to when things broke bad. I wasn’t being harmed like I once was, but it clearly wasn’t a solution if I had to spend the rest of my life being lonely and scared.
Our bodies are built to crave security. It is one of the strongest drives we have and behind a whole lot of the choices we make – especially the ones we make that we don’t understand.
We often inherit a belief that the way to create that security is to acquire enough status – particularly money. Many people believe that if you are thin enough, pretty enough, rich enough, privileged enough, then you can keep yourself safe from mortality. Just look at all the tech bros biohacking their way through life. They are proof that there is no amount of money that will make you feel safe.
Status does not feel like security. It feels like anxiety. It feels precarious, because it is precarious. The second that status changes, so does the safety you are counting on. Status is the least stable identity you could attach to – it changes based on the room you’re in. Listen to how people talk about a Midwestern 10 vs a California 4. What counts as beautiful is relative and contextual. Look at how the billionaires hoard unfathomable amounts of money, more than they can spend in lifetimes, just to one up each other. There is no point at which status feels safe.
Life is inherently risky. Human bodies are so vulnerable, there are threats at every turn, and we already know how the story ends. There is no way to accumulate enough status, money, or power to ameliorate that risk. Humans are social insects like bees or ants. We cannot survive without a hive looking out for us.
People lose their homes. Medical bills wipe out savings. A global pandemic of an airborne virus means that no amount of luxury can ensure health. But investing in community is a different story. Investing in community lowers risk – like preventing infectious disease or crime due to poverty – and it also creates a safety net for when that risk inevitably fails.
Investing in community means that there will be people happy to help you when you need it. Because you have helped them when they needed it. Community requires mutual caregiving and collaboration because our liberation is bound up in each other.
Investing in community is the only way to tackle problems that go beyond the individual. Systemic scale problems like government corruption, pollution, climate change, and public safety cannot be solved by hyper independence. But they have regularly, and often, been solved through groups of committed people uniting to create change.
The 504 sit-in was a protest disabled people launched to get the federal government to improve and enforce disability protections. For 26 days disabled people sat in federal office waiting rooms, sometimes as many as 200 at a time, with their oxygen tanks and other assorted medical equipment, refusing to move until the laws were passed. The Black Panthers, who had already pioneered programs for community caregiving like free breakfasts for school kids, provided food and other necessities. Teamsters drove semi’s full of people in their wheelchairs to Washington to protest at the Capitol. Thanks to the solidarity of cross organization collaboration, the 504 was signed and the law began to recognize the civil rights of disabled people.
Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe. It’s not just a protest chant. It is a call to action. Community keeps us safe. Caring for each other keeps us safe.
But in the current dominant culture, it is a sign of status to not have to provide care. The more you can outsource care tasks, the more elevated your position in society. Wealthy and powerful people signal their wealth and power with nannies and cooks and drivers and hairstylists and on and on. There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing care tasks – I happily employ people as part of managing my resources and relying on expertise – but there’s nothing right about outsourcing either. Believing you are above providing care is denying your humanity.
Our bodies require care, but we don’t talk near enough about the need we each have to provide care. Caregiving has been so devalued that it feels shameful to admit the longing we feel to offer care and have it safely received. So a lot of us just become dog people.
I know to the very core of me how desperate that need to offer love can be. I have journals and journals full of my sorrow from the 16 years I was unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant and felt cosmically rejected. I felt like I was holding my hands out, overflowing with love I was waiting to offer, and no one would take it. The love just kept pouring out on to the floor as passersby stepped around the mess.
Loneliness is our modern epidemic. We are so disconnected from each other and suffering for it, each feeling like we need someone to care for us without realizing how much we need to care for others.
Care is the cure for loneliness. If you show up and offer care to the people in your life – bring food, watch kids, offer a ride, lend an ear – paying attention to who returns the favor, you can build a community for yourself that will be able to support you, no matter what life brings. A community is the safety net that creates real security.