Whatever community you find yourself in, there’s always
politics. And I don’t mean Politics, I mean politics. It’s
present in social media, in the family, in the schoolyard. Eventually, you
realize the politics have become so familiar that you hardly have to navigate;
you just have to remember the rules. This person doesn’t get along with that
person, so don’t invite them over for coffee at the same time. That writer was
wronged by that group blog, so maybe don’t send them a link from that
particular site. Their friendship went down in a blaze of glory so maybe think
twice before trusting either side’s version.
There’s always politics.
Happily, I usually find myself in a unique position – just
out of the loop enough not to know (and therefore, not to care) about other
people’s personal politics, and just clueless enough to be able to be friends
with everybody. There are very, very few people in my life – online or off –
that I have a personal beef with. Yes, I like to hear the odd bit of gossip,
but I prefer to meet people in a bubble. Nevertheless, one eventually learns of
all the seedy threads that tentatively bind the people you interact with to one
another, and it would be foolish to tread heavily on some of those threads.
So now I find myself in a new town, with only a very small
network of friends. The web of community is unknown and vast (relatively
speaking) and I find myself on the outer threads, trying to figure out where
the gossamer lines of silk intersect, and whether those intersections lead to
safety or scandal.
In other words, as I meet people, I am blissfully unaware of
who they like, who they hate, who likes them, who hates them and/or the myriad
of other ways they may or may not already be connected to people I have or will
meet. I have been blissfully unaware of the politics in this town.
But all that is changing.
The ties that bind people together – as well as the rifts
that keep them apart – are starting to show. I’m meeting somebody in the
schoolyard, then realizing that I already know her
brother/uncle/cousin/butcher. Connecting these dots has made me feel more
enmeshed in my community, more like I am tethered to an actual planet and not
just floating in the cosmos.
But as I try to become more involved in my community, I am
discovering quickly that not all of the dots connect to make a clearer picture.
Sometimes the connections overlap in an unpleasant and unwelcome way. I don’t
want to know that the storeowner I had a wonderfully friendly conversation with
and looked forward to chatting with again, had wronged my husband’s cousin in a
bid for curling club president 15 years ago. I don’t want to know that the
mutual friend I was introduced to through one of my (very few) real friendships
here has a beef with one of my only other real friends here. I don’t want the warnings that the people I am meeting will keep
me on the outside, longer.
So many things we do as adults are compared to being in high
school, a time so traumatic, so self-emolliating, so fraught with social
anxiety, that 20 years later it is still our compass point for any
uncomfortable social dynamic. This is totally like high school, I could say of
the politics. Except – I didn’t find high school all that terrible. I was
friends with people from all groups, yet belonged to not one specifically. I
was a bit of a Nomad, hanging out after school hours with kids that didn’t go
to my high school (or any high school, but that’s a different story), and
caring not enough to get caught up in anybody’s bullshit drama.
I guess I’m going to have to treat this community the same
way. I’m going to have to make my own
new friends in a bubble. I am going to look all around me to figure out where
it is that I am, but I’m not going to peer so hard that I see the things I
heard others whispering of. I am going to just have to be strong enough not to
take other people’s opinions of whomever I socialize with, to heart. And
hopefully, I won’t always feel like I am walking the perimeter of this
community, kept out of the part of the web that is more tightly woven, safer,
as I am left adrift by my otherness and my refusal to be swayed by the
politics.
