What Can We Learn about Community from Social Isolation?
Most of the year, I spend my time as a touring musician traveling around the country with my band, The Greeting Committee. Much like other industries that rely on any sort of public attendance, everything with touring has come to a complete halt due to the coronavirus.
However, during these anxiety-ridden times, people are also showing how, though isolated in almost every physical sense, we can still be a part of a community. These times are showing us that we can slow down and be more intentional about how we live.
What can we learn from being isolated?
Photo of the author on tour.
When I’m touring the country, I do my best to stop and look around the city I’m in. But most of the time, I’m traveling 70 mph down major highways, blind to all the nuances I drive past. Most people live similarly, driving past fleeting images on their way to work or the grocery store.
It’s a matter of scale—and most of us live on a scale that makes it impossible to observe little details. It’s a luxury we get so used to that we don’t realize it’s even a luxury. As we are all forced into self-isolation, the scale of our daily lives has become dramatically smaller.
In my neighborhood, it’s unheard of—and almost unreasonable—to walk or bike to the nearest grocery store, which is almost three miles away. However, with coronavirus restrictions severely discouraging most reasons to drive anywhere, more people are walking and biking, primarily at their own leisure. On a dreary Sunday afternoon, I followed suit.
As I walked around my neighborhood— the same neighborhood streets that I zip by at 35 mph to go to the nearest coffee shop—everything seemed to contract. Life that I hardly ever noticed suddenly came out of the woodwork. One house I passed was loud with the muted crashes and bangs of someone playing drums. In front of another house, I narrowly missed stepping on a fallen gummy bear…while also narrowly missing plenty of forgotten reminders from the neighborhood dogs. Evidence of life is all around us. It’s only when we stop or slow down that these clues become noticeable.
I stopped to look at a creek I had barely ever noticed in the 3 years of living in my neighborhood.
While the touring half of my career is on pause, the other half, writing, is in full force. I’m not the only one using my time like this. I constantly see friends and family posting about their newest creative endeavor—whether it’s playing music, painting, or doing some other hobby. Being able to slow down allows us to not only be intentional with our communities but also with ourselves. Isolation teaches us that when all the external things that make us happy begin to go away, we are left to rely on ourselves and each other.
Can we continue to be intentional about our communities beyond a crisis?
It’s sad that it takes a crisis and a government-enacted quarantine for life to slow down, but I believe this is how our communities are supposed to exist. I’ve seen more of my neighbors in the last week than during the previous three years I’ve lived in this house. When we slow down, it’s amazing the things we get to see that we normally don’t in our busy, fast-paced lives.
Our cities can learn a great deal from everyone being isolated. Now more than ever, people want community and relationships, but can this intentionality stick?
Despite all the economic consequences of the virus, most people are fairly optimistic about how things will end up socially. They cite their own examples of how people are being more kind and intentional. Yet most of our communities aren’t designed to sustain this kind of slow life. We see this in the ways our cities prioritize auto-oriented developments. That scale isn’t sustainable if we really want to create strong, intentional cities.
Isolation has brought people closer together in ways that are unprecedented for many of us. Yet I fear our cities aren’t strong enough to maintain this. A lot of these good-will-to-all intentions aren’t going to stick unless the design of the urban and suburban environments we live in reflect these same intentions. Imagine if we could live our lives this way during a time of growth in our country and not just during a pandemic. What would our communities look like then?
Top image of the author’s neighborhood
About the Author
Pierce Turcotte is a young musician and aspiring writer living outside of Kansas City, Missouri. He is also an urban planning student at Arizona State University. When Pierce is home, he works as a barista. When he's on the road, he's out playing shows and probably listening to a podcast.
You can find out more about his band, The Greeting Committee on their website, Instagram or Twitter.