I saw the film One Battle After Another last week. I loved it so much. I was especially struck by the character of Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, who taught martial arts to the protagonist’s daughter, Willa. I won’t share spoilers, but Sensei has an intricate community of support, ranging from skateboarders to nurses, who do what they each can do to help one another.

The movie reminded me that the antidote to today’s troubles is to organize together in community. When I say today’s troubles, I mean late-stage capitalism and the rise of fascism.

Community means people who congregate because they choose to be together. This can look like neighbours caring for each other, extended families having each other’s back, or grassroots groups built from scratch. Often communities come together around a need to support each other, fill a gap or to organize to fight for a cause. (Getting to Maybe is the first book that I read about how groups of people can make meaningful change in the world).

I did not grow up in community. I was taught that the world was dog eat dog (apologies to my own dog for this unfortunate idiom). Our family lived in the suburbs where neighbours didn’t even see each other. People drove in and out of their garages back and forth to work. I had no culture or spiritual practice to lean on. My family didn’t go to church, they didn't volunteer and they were not close to extended family. It was a classic North American, individualistic upbringing.

This hyper-independent way of living is going to be the death of us.

I found out that I actually did need other people when I had my first child at the ,tender age of 25. I had no family support and none of my friends had children. It was an especially vulnerable point in my life. I struggled with breastfeeding and I was home all day, every day, just me, my sore nipples and my little baby.

I came upon the stark realization that I could not mother alone. My breastfeeding troubles brought me to La Leche League, where I learned about the strength of women and the value of peer support. I continued with mothers’ groups when I moved to a city - where I knew nobody - when my second child was born. I needed other moms even more when my youngest son was born with Down syndrome. There was no local support group, and I began a moms’ group for other moms who had babies with Down syndrome. I allowed this group of moms to fade away when our kids began school. I desperately needed community again when Aaron graduated from high school, and I’ve spent the last four years slowly building it back up again, one person at a time.

Building a community means reaching out to people you may not know. I am an introvert by nature, and I don’t do well with rejection, so new friendships are not easy for me. I’m terrible in big groups, but I excel at one-on-one conversations, so that’s what I concentrate on. Building a community doesn’t mean suddenly becoming an extrovert. It means drawing on your strengths and doing what you can do. I can meet people for coffee. I can chat. I can knit like-minded folks together. I'm not going to host some big event because that's not me.

Community means being inconvenienced and annoyed by people and their quirks, but continuing to soldier on. It means not keeping track of whose turn it is, or who owes who what and simply believing that it all evens out in the end. It means giving your time without expecting something back. It is about suspending our competitive and capitalistic ways and trying our best to simply care for each other as flawed human beings.

As the Sensei in One Battle After Another says, “I've got a little Latino Harriet Tubman situation going on at my place. All legit. From the heart. No cash.” 

What would the world look like if we ceased being transactional and thinking what's in it for me?  If we stopped with the dog eat dog? And we cared for each other because it is the right thing - the human thing - to do?

The government isn't going to save us. The corporates aren't going to save us. At the end of the day, all we have is each other.