A few months ago I had a meeting with a young man with big dreams. It was a get to know each other conversation over bad coffee (do not EVER buy a Starbucks cappuccino … not going to make that mistake again). The guy across the table was an idealist. The good thing about idealists is they push all of us to be better. The bad thing is they are never truly satisfied with anything, like a grumpy perfectionist armed with moral arrogance. But then maybe the coffee was just souring my mood.
Our conversation meandered across a variety of topics: the upcoming election, the impact of Covid on churches, who might win the World Series. As with a lot of conversations in Northern California, at some point the topic of exorbitant real estate prices came up.
Usually you can only go so far down this real estate topic before everyone just shakes their head and sighs deeply. But it triggered something in this guy that made his eyes sparkle.
He had a plan.
Living in community. Shared housing. Shared expenses, shared cooking, shared chores. Now, pardon he cynic in me, but I’ve always felt this sounded a lot like dorm life. I mean really, how different is it? But I bit my tongue and listened attentively.
When he had run out of steam about the beauty of living in community, I asked him what his motivation was for living this way beyond cost savings.
“I think it would do me a world of good to live in a community. It would challenge my spirituality and my sense of entitlement.”
Here’s where my junkyard wisdom (or smart-ass attitude) shows up. I said instinctively, “Community is not transactional.”
He looked at me, slowly nodding as if he understood, but I could see he didn’t. To be fair, I’m not sure I did either. But I plowed forward anyway.
“If you go into a communal living situation, you can’t make your top two priorities 1) cost savings and 2) personal growth. If you do the community will be an utter failure. People who successfully live in community — and there are shockingly few of them in our ultra-independent culture — focus on the other. They don’t focus on themselves. What you just told me is your motivation is selfish, no matter the flowery self-actualization language.”
At this point he became defensive, and said no of course not and he didn’t mean it that way. I nodded and listened and let him explain that he wasn’t actually a narcissist. But I could tell what I said made him think.
Here’s the thing. Junkyard wisdom can allow that two opposite things can be a strand of truth together. Living in community is cheaper, could help this guy grow, and is probably a good way for all of us to overcome some of our selfishness. All true things. But it can also be true that our motivations going into such an idealistic situation can be flawed and become the groundwork for failure.
I’m not sure I’ll be meeting with this guy again. But if he calls, I look forward to hearing what he has to say.