You Say You Want a Village … But do you?

Your village is out there, waiting for you. It might even be knocking on your door, and you haven’t realized. 

People often think they need to make enormous shifts to find community; they need to move to a tiny village on the other side of the world or into a compound in the woods. But that’s not true. Here’s what you actually need: subtle shifts and a willingness to be uncomfortable. 

So many people talk about how they want a village, and yet, I see them rejecting the small changes they need to make to let their villages in. They won’t accept help – a ride to the airport, a babysitter, a pre-cooked meal – because they don’t want to put a person out or let go of control.

I can offer to pick up your groceries or watch your children over and over again. I am choosing that; I want to be in community with you. But at the end of the day, you have to want that, too. We need to co-create this relationship and support system together. 

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• Community, which is cited as the answer for societal issues like childcare/elder care shortages, mental health issues, etc. – but rarely is there advice on how to find it
• The idea of “hiring” a village – a message families often hear – for grocery pick-ups, babysitting, Uber rides, etc.
• Rejecting help when you need it because you feel like you can’t accept unpaid help or are unwilling to let go of control
• The level of internal required to step off the hamster wheel and be willing to feel discomfort in either asking for help or offering it

Resources & Links

Listen to Episode 8 with my friend Adrienne about building a friendship community for her family.

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram and TikTok!

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

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Download Slowly free and get 30% off Slowly Plus using my link: https://open.slowly.app/miXL/l8ei5iw6

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Transcript

Podcast Intro/Outro: 0:02

Hey, all right, gang, here's two nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello. Welcome to the friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander, and each week, we explore what's working and what's not in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections together. We're reimagining the rules of friendship.

Alex Alexander: 0:58

I keep coming back to this thought over and over again, which is that everyone is out here collectively screaming like, I want a village. Where is my village? I want my people? Where is community? And yet, when I'm listening to people talk about community or how they're trying to build it, or I'm just, quite frankly, analyzing the interactions of the people I run into in my daily life. I find myself wondering over and over again, like, Okay, you're screaming you want a village. But do you really? Do you? Because I think most people would immediately answer like, yeah, yes, I absolutely want a village and a support system and more people who would be there for me and to build my web.

Unknown: 1:46

But like the problem

Alex Alexander: 1:49

either isn't big enough, or the average person doesn't realize how big it is in their life, and so their actions don't show that they want community. Today's episode is really just me hitting record and giving you my incomplete thoughts. I'm just going to kind of talk this out today. This is not my final answer. This is not my final thought process. It is something that just keeps coming up for me over and over and over again. So here we are. I think what we need to start with is kind of where we're at, collectively with this whole Where is my village, where is my support system thing? And the first piece I want to touch on this is something I mentioned before, is that quite often community is cited as the answer. What I mean by that is when people are talking about really big societal issues, right, like the child care crisis or the elder care crisis or gun violence or mental health issues, a million things, often by the end, researchers or media or journalists, whatever the answer will be, like, community, and that's it. That's what you get. Like, go build community, right? And nobody really talks about how we're doing that. That's what we do here on the friendship IRL podcast. But I even listened to a podcast about building a village earlier this week, and it was talking about kind of like this idea of where is the village, and when I tell you, I listened to an hour long podcast in which they just detailed all the ways and reasons we don't have a village with no ideas for how to actually build it. At the end, it was just like, well, we need this. I'm like, That's not helpful to people. Okay, so I think that's one piece. I think some other things of note when it comes to like, where are we collectively? Is that most people, most content I'm seeing out there, is talking about how the only way to get a village is to hire a village. Now this is especially prevalent in with like content surrounding families getting support, right? It's like, if you the only way to get your village is to pay for your village to hire child care or cleaners or people to do errands or chauffeur your kids around, right? It's to pay for a village. But there's also, even if you aren't a parent, even if you don't have whether it's like child care or elder care, and you aren't hiring support that way, most people are still hiring their village, right? Like Uber Eats if you're sick. Instacart, if you're sick, if you need to go to a doctor's appointment, it's like, oh, well, I'll just take an Uber home. If you need somebody to pick you up from the airport, you take an Uber home, right? We are still paying for our village hiring people on TaskRabbit for a home repair when we don't know the answer. Everybody. Is doing this, and we're talking about it in some senses more than others. I think another thing I see when we're it's like, okay, what is the status of where we're at with our village, is that capitalism is one of the hamster wheels nobody can get off of, right? We are all marketed to. I did not look up the number of times a day, but I'm sure it would make me sick. The number of things we are told a day we need that will solve all of our problems is absolutely wild. It's like you're sick. So here's 10 devices you need and things that will help you you're run down and burnt out. Here's five courses, two podcasts and 10 gadgets that will solve your problems. If you have a problem, the solution is to buy your way out of it, and even just to function on your daily life, right? The solution is to buy your way out of it. It's like the level of breakdown of our community of if you live in a suburban neighborhood, let's use that example. And everybody has a lawn everybody buys a lawn mower, got to pick the one you like, with all the features you want, fits in your budget that aligns with whatever. And every garage down the street has a lawn mower. And if you don't have a lawn mower, it's probably because you have, again, hired your village, and you have somebody you're paying to come and mow your lawn, maybe, but it's probably not the kid down the street. It is a company, because Heaven forbid you hire the high schooler down the street. I'm gonna do an entire episode on that sometime soon. But why do we need 25 lawn mowers on the street? Just curious, somebody give me a good answer, because I don't understand why each block of, let's say, eight homes, doesn't buy one lawn mower that they then share with their neighbors. So we'd have now two lawn mowers instead of 20 on these two blocks. So you even have a backup lawn mower, like if your blocks lawn mower dies and you need to mow your lawn today, you just go on down to the next block and borrow it till you can chip in all the money together. Right? Every house chips in $50 to buy the new lawnmower. But no, no, no, no, we can't possibly do that. Everybody must buy their lawnmower, and must buy the one they want, and it has to be exactly perfect, and we can't possibly share with our neighbors, saying, This is where we're at, guys. It just feels like everybody screams about how community is the answer. But then nobody really takes the time to sit down and think, like, Okay, well, if that's the answer, how do I get there? Instead, we are just stuck on this hamster wheel. My friend Adrian actually came up with this analogy the other day, and I think it's so amazing. This is apparently what she uses. If you go back and listen to episode eight all the way back in the archives, Episode Eight, that is my friend Adrian, and we actually need to do a another episode together, because in that episode, you'll hear kind of the struggles of her initial community building, and she is in such a different place now that I think we need an update. But she is really living this out in her life. And I want to tell you the analogy she told me. She said that the way she feels when she talks to people is that everybody is stuck on this hamster wheel that they don't even know they're on. We're just running so fast, right? Because you don't have the support, because you have to earn enough money to either pay for your village or to buy your lawnmower and your instant pot, and your this, and your that, like you have to buy all the things that everybody on your street already has, all the tools, all the supplies, all the sewing machines, whatever it is you are running so fast to be able to afford these things that you don't have any time to do anything besides just basically survive, because you got to be able to afford all the things, because you got to be able to pay for your village. And you just keep going around and around and around and around. And the entire time you're on there, you're just screaming, like, I need community. I need support. I want this. And then this is why I asked, like, do you really want it. Because what I notice in my everyday life is people who say they want the village, right? A lot of people tell me they want it. They know what I do for a living, and then what happens is this, for example, I offer someone help in some way, shape or form. Or I will say, hey, like, I am willing to watch your kids for a little bit. And this is the same person who's saying they want help and support, right? And they're so stuck on the hamster wheel that they're like, no, no, no, I couldn't possibly ask you to do that. They're like, my kids are a lot it would be time out of your day you'd have to put up with kids. Guys. I like kids. If that is not evident on here, I like kids. My people know that Michael and I put a lot of energy and time around being around the kids in our life. So that should not be a thing that comes out of your mouth, but it's uncomfortable to accept that help. And so it's like, no, no, you don't have to. And what I want to say, and what I have said is like, I know I don't have to. I didn't offer because I felt like I had to. I offered because I want to, but we are so uncomfortable with making the tiny, subtle changes needed to actually let our village in that's like, Oh no, no, you don't need to do that. I have to flush this out more. I'm just gonna drop it here. But my friend Adrian actually was like, I think it's worse with things that center around kids, and that's its own piece I need to dive into. But I do think that everybody's doing this in some way, shape or form, right? It's even like, the number of times I've offered to pick somebody up from the airport, and they'd be like, Oh, well, you don't have to do that. You're right. I don't, I don't have to do that, but I would happily do that. And I have to, like, fight you to get you to let me do it. I offered. I offered to do it. Another example would be, I was hanging out with one of my nieces so while ago, and I was thrilled to have her for the day. We went and did some adventures together. Then her parents, some of our closest friends, were like, Okay, well, let me buy you dinner to pay you for watching her. It's like, I don't need to be paid. I wanted to spend time with her. Like, no, I don't know. I'm trying to think of other examples. I mean, there's just so many. Sometimes friends will ask a question, even, like, I had somebody ask me about some meal prep tips, and I went back and forth with them, some voice memos on like, here's my tips, and it's like, you could have just sent like, one sentence. It's like, one sentence. It's like, that wouldn't have been helpful to you. I'm happy to do it. This is, like a way my brain works. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is, we all scream we want it, but then in the moments where it's happening, where, like, the shift is happening, where we can step off the hamster wheel, we think the floor is lava. And why is that? I think a piece I'm going to kind of go through why, I think some of why we think the floor is lava, like why actually leaning into community is something people are scared of, because I've now spent some time thinking about it again. These are my unpolished thoughts, but I'm just dropping them here for you. One of the things I think that scares people about community is it's like, what would it even look like? Because we don't have tons of readily available modern examples of kind of this more like subtle shift of community that we talk about here on the podcast. I think that a lot of people have this vision of, I want community. I need community. But the examples we have are like very extreme shifts. It's like, I have to move across the world, into the woods, into a tiny little village of people, or moving into kind of like a compound with your friends, always goes viral on the internet, but those are examples of, like, having to kind of blow up your life. So it's like, I want this, but we don't have a lot of examples of what this subtle shift looks like. And I think it's even hard to give examples. As somebody who does this, it is hard to give the little examples, because they don't necessarily draw as much attention. We just keep going then the big drastic shifts. But when you sit there and you scream, like, I want community, and yet you think you have to go to this drastic end to get it. It can feel this like, okay, so I want community, but my job requires me to live in a city, and I can't just up and move to the middle of nowhere into a compound, because I need to pay my bill like I can't even afford to up and move my life, or I would love to move somewhere closer to all my friends, but I need to stay in the community I grew up in, because I need to be able to take care of my family's farm as my parents are aging like that, drastic shift would require blowing everything. Up, and a lot of people aren't willing to do that. But I'm here to say, I really don't think you have to blow everything up. But our vision, like we're envisioning what could be, most people opt for kind of this, like Old Village idea of, what if we all just went back in time to when there was no social media and there was this and like, that's not, it's not how this is gonna work. Or people think of the kind of, like, blow it all up utopian version of community. And I think a huge piece of that is the examples of building community in like, modern times in moderation is such a subtle shift that we don't have very many examples of it. And also, it's not as catchy, to be quite frank, because it's just a ton of little things. And so because it's a lot of little things, when you're on this hamster wheel and you see the little things, but the floor feels like lava. You're like, well, I don't really want to step on the floor, because I don't know if these little things are going to add up and actually change my life. Like it doesn't seem worth it, almost to people to step off the hamster wheel. They don't know what's going to happen. I think that's another thing is like, this modern version of community. Do we even have an example? Like, can we even comprehend what it looks like to come together in a more modern age? I don't know if we really have the picture of that. So there's kind of a blind trust there of like, if I take these actions, what would that even look like? And you almost have to decide that the hamster wheel, the reality you're on, is more painful than the unknown of what this would look like for us all to collectively step off the hamster wheel, or even for gosh, all of us, even for 30% of us, to step off the hamster wheel? What would that look like? How would the world change? So now that we've covered the fact that we don't really know what the vision is, and it's hard to promote said vision because it's not catchy, I want to point out some other like real barriers I'm seeing to making these changes in your life. And the next one is the level of internal work that is required to step off the hamster wheel, because it's a lot in that podcast I mentioned earlier about like, people trying to find their village where there really was no answer. One thing I did notice is that when there was maybe just like a slight solution proposed. It was to put in more work, to call your friends more to offer to pick up toilet paper for them, to offer to drop off a meal, like, to put more deposits into your community bank. And while I do think that's important, don't get me wrong, I also think that a huge piece of this is setting aside some time to do the internal work related to how uncomfortable it is. I've obviously talked about this indirectly a million times on this podcast. But not only is it deciding to drop off a meal to someone, right, but the internal work I'm talking about is coaching yourself through offering when you're not sure if they'll accept, right? When this is outside your norm, it is doing the internal work when somebody turns you down and then you're like, Well, why did I offer? They don't even want this anyways. It is the internal work of deciding this is so important that you do it again and again and again. It's the internal work of feeling like the little actions will add up. It is noticing when somebody is starting to take you up on the offers or change their perspective, and also noticing when somebody is stuck on the hamster wheel and that that has nothing really to do with you, like there is so much besides just taking people the meal or watching people's kids To actually leaning into this community, like so much unlearning, so much changing perspectives, that you really have to spend time thinking about this stuff offline, outside of your conversations with your people, right? It's noticing where you need that ride home from the airport, and your gut instinct is to call the Uber instead of messaging your friends to see if they'll pick you up, and if they can't pick you up, it's doing the internal work of that wasn't a failure. That was a success, because you did reach out and that over time. Like, maybe we can build this right. It's the internal work of realizing that you are at the very beginning of a movement, of a shift, of a change, and therefore it's going to be even more heavy lifting, because other people are not here yet, and yet you have to keep going, because this is the vision, not only for the world, but like for your own life, that you don't want to keep living the way you have been. You want to get off the hamster wheel. That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the internal work that is so important. Another real barrier, I think, is that the subtle shifts method, the you know, if you're not going to blow it all up and move to a compound with your friends, if you can't do that, if you don't want to do that, if that is impossible for you, like it isn't for most people, then the way I talk about doing it here on the podcast, the way I've done it in my own life, the actions sometimes are so small that they feel insufficient. And I think that's hard for people, because when you're saying that community is the number one thing you need in your life, and then the actions you're taking are just so small that they're chipping away, it can be hard because you want to, like, dive in, and I don't think that's really how this works, like it is going to be a subtle shift over time, right? This is a new way of life. This is similar to how people talk about other areas of your life that you make changes, like, if you will use my health stuff, for example, if I want to deal with my health this year, that's we, hopefully all know that's a big goal of mine. I had to get to a place where I realized what's going on with me. I've already done that. I've already gotten some diagnoses and found a good doctor, right? I have accepted where I'm at. We've done some analysis on where I need to go, and I can't just wake up next week and feel all better. That is not how this works. I would love that. I would love to be able to just snap my fingers, but that is not the reality, right? Nobody would expect that of me. But what I do need to do is take my supplements and my meds multiple times a day, every day, for months and months at a time. I need to pay attention to not like trigger myself at the meals I'm eating, and not eat anything that's gonna send me stuck in bed for multiple days, right? It's the little things I need to get outside more and try and hit five to 7000 steps a day to get a little more movement in like it is seriously small things that are going to stabilize my health. I can't just do that overnight, so this is the exact same way. But I think people are so desperate for community that they want to make just like major swings and major shifts, because they want the community like right now, they need it now. You need it now. I get that. But we are in such a place where you have to just tell your brain over and over and over again that those tiny little things are adding up even when your brain is playing tricks on you and telling you that they are insufficient. That's not the case. They will add up over time. You gotta trust that. Another barrier that I have been playing around with in my brain is this idea that in order to be in community, we need to give up control a little bit. Yeah, Hate to break it to you. Okay, in a world that is full of content about how you know and information and conversations about boundaries and doing the best by our next generation and self care, you already know my feelings about self care and taking control of your destiny and what you want, right? If you want that promotion, you can go after it. You can ask for a raise. You can set these plans. You can do whatever like in a world that is inundated with how you take control of the situation. In order to build community, you have to let go of control a little bit, right? You have to let people in, like somebody bringing you a meal, may mean that you don't get to decide the exact ingredients that are in that meal. If somebody is watching your kids, that is in your community, and isn't a au pair or a nanny that you have hired, they may not do things exactly how you've done them. If somebody is driving you to the airport and picking you up, it may not be at the exact time or manner that you would have done it right or that you. Exact temperature you would have kept the car. If somebody else is picking up your groceries for you, they may get a brand you don't like, like in a world in which we have developed so many ways to control everything, I mean down to if you want to take control of your health, right? You can get an app or a device that will tell you your blood sugar, your steps, your heart rate, your this, your that, like, we have all these metrics, and we can control everything. When you let people in, you lose a little bit of control. And I think that's hard for a lot of people. I think there's a lot out there of like, okay, well, I want help, but I want it in this exact way. And what you have to remember is like, we are co creating this, so the person who is helping you should want to help you in a way that does really help you, which means, like, respects your goals and your plans and your this and your that, but they also may not want or be able to help you in like, the line by line, exact method you would like to be helped. Also, that's a lot of work for you. Do you even want to do that work? I'm really going off the cuff here. Can you tell I'm just saying, I'm just saying, Pay attention to the ways that somebody offers to help you, and you struggle because you can't control every step of the process. And then really think to yourself, like, what parts of this are actually absolute must, like, you must do it this way, right? For example, if somebody's cooking me a meal, there are foods I absolutely cannot have right now at all. And so it's worth it to me to make people a list of those foods, but I have to let go of the rest. If somebody offers to help you with your kids, for example, just know this is touchy, because I'm a child free person at the moment, but if somebody offers to help you with your kids, do you feel like you need to control the exact four hours in every single thing that happens? Or can you tell this person like, I mean, I think an obvious non negotiable is like, number one is the kid's safety. But are there some things you can let loose a little bit so that you can let somebody in to help you, just something to think about? I think that's a real barrier for people. Now, the final barrier that I keep coming back to I've mentioned this a little bit, is this idea that, again, in a world where we are taught that we can control what happens to us in order to be in community, we are co creating with somebody or with a variety of people. So what that means is I can offer you help over and over and over again, right? I can want to be in community with you. I can offer to pick up your groceries, to watch your children, to pick up your mail while you're out of town. Whatever I offer, I can offer over and over and over again, because I am choosing that I want to be in community with you. But at the end of the day, if you just keep telling me, like, oh well, you don't have to do that. Or I know it would be nice to have that, but I don't really need it. It's it. It's a lot of your time, or thanks for offering, but we're really okay. We'll get by whatever you tell me, I have to remember that we are co creating this relationship and this support system together and in a world where people are stuck on that hamster wheel, and the community like stepping off, it feels like lava. The result in our life, like what that looks like, is that I feel like I am banging my head against the wall over and over and over and over again, and that's exhausting. And it gets to the point where you're stuck on the hamster wheel right in those beginning stages, you want to get off, but you keep offering and people keep turning you down, and you feel like you're banging your head against that, like Plexiglas side of the hamster wheel, being like, get me off of here. And that is so hard to do. Now, I mentioned my friend Adrian, like we were literally just talking about this earlier this week, and I realized that we have had very different approaches to this. My approach to changing the conversation and trying to get people to see like, hey, the floor is not lava. I'm down here hanging out. It's actually like some nice fluffy clouds. It's pretty great down here. Do you want to join me? Is to be very subtle. This is what I have told you time and time again on the podcast. Is like, it doesn't have to be these really intense conversations. It can just be the offers or. Or, you know, like acknowledging something, okay. What's an example? If I offer a friend a ride to the airport and they say, No, no, that's a lot of your time. You don't have to do that, right? I would say that a subtle kind of way to just try to change the conversation over time has been for me to say something like, Well, I didn't offer because I felt like I had to. I offered because this is a way I can show up for you, and I'd love to show up for you. Now maybe they'll change their mind, or maybe they won't, but that has been the way that I have just kind of like, put these little dings, these little like, hey, is this really what you want out there to the people in my life, my friend Adrienne has gone around it very differently. I learned she just lays it out. She talks a lot about this idea of, like her family's community philosophy, and how this is a value, and how in order to make this change right, you need to watch each other's kids and loan things out and like she really goes hard with kind of a her joke is that she's like a disciple. For my work, a little bit is that she is out here preaching the good message, and she has seen success with that either way, what both of us are doing is trying to get the people in our lives to buy into this vision and to start to slowly step off the hamster wheel, and to start to slowly test the waters and see that like hey, the floor is Not lava. You don't have to blow up your entire life to have community and move to the woods into a compound. We can do that right here, where we are in small ways, like I need you to trust that this is possible, so that we can have this right, because I can't have community unless other people around me buy into a similar vision, and that takes time to do. And it's not comfortable. It's not comfortable because also, like the actions require, like the vulnerability and the shift and the new way of putting yourself out there, but also it's not comfortable, because at this stage, we are early adopters to this, and some people think you're kind of crazy for trying to step off the hamster wheel. I think that's where I'm gonna leave it today, because I'm sure there's much more I could say. I am positive that there are other areas I could go. There are probably other barriers, but it just seems like one of the first steps here is putting them out there, right? Is awareness, because so many people are screaming, I want a village. I want community. I want support. But then when those opportunities show up, they don't actually want to be uncomfortable in order to build what they want. So I hope that this episode does a couple things. Number one, I hope it starts a conversation. I would love to know if this sparked any ideas for you, if you have more examples, if you have ways that you're offering to be in community with people and what they're saying back to you, if you have any more of those, like, oh, I don't want to bother you. Like, what are people saying that it's unique. I'd love to hear that. But also, I mean, I just hope this brings some awareness. I hope that you are listening to this episode and maybe start to see those tiny little moments where you're either trying and somebody just isn't able to step off the hamster wheel, like they're so stuck in their own little world, or maybe you'll see the places where you're doing this. Because believe me, I am not perfect. I have never tried to say I am perfect on this podcast ever. We all have so far to go. I have built something in my life that is so beautiful that is unlike anything I ever could have imagined when it comes to a support system. And there are still places I catch myself doing this. I'll close with this example, right? You maybe can hear my voice. I'm recording this. I've had pneumonia for two weeks now. I'm doing much better, but one of my closest friends I was telling her, like, Hey, we are supposed to get together for some holiday stuff tonight. I don't think we're gonna be able to make it, because I don't want you to catch the pneumonia that I have. I'm not through all my antibiotics yet, so I'm just stuck at home here recording things in between coughing. And she was like, Okay, well, let me know this weekend if you need anything. There's a chance that Michael, I don't know what's going to happen yet, like he may go do some holiday things without me, because he's fine. I might be stuck here at home. So my immediate thought was like, no, no, I'm good, right? Like, I'll make sure that before he leaves, I have everything I can need. He, like, goes to the grocery store, I can Instacart or whatever. Like, I still have these thoughts. I talk about this all the time, and yet I caught myself being like, this is seriously what I talk about. Why? When I just tell her, like, yeah, if something comes up, which is very possible, it might, I'll definitely message you. Why couldn't I just allow myself to do that? So I am, in no way, shape or form perfect. I am also catching myself. I'm also doing this work, and we are just here on the podcast, figuring it out together. Thank you for listening to this episode of friendship. IRL, I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at Alex. Alex dot chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle at It's Alex Alexander, or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now, if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter. The next time you and your friend hang out, no need for a teary Goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week. You