The cost of community is inconvenience

a podcast has helped me with a lot of things. Initially when I started my podcast, I wanted to work on my articulation. I wanted to just talk about things that I have learned because I really love sharing. I love research. I love reading. So I just wanted a platform to speak about just interesting stuff or just things that I found interesting. And obviously because I'm just there, but at heart I just love talking. But I think the biggest takeaway that I have gotten from having a podcast is I've learned to take accountability. What happens is when I work what an episode of us tell to the research and all of that jazz, right? I started to realise that oh, maybe I'm not as healed as I think I am and maybe I'm not as self-aware as I thought I was. Majority of my episode is really just me talking my own tea. Today's episode I actually saw a TikTok video on it. Way at the scale was like me wanting to cancel plans, but I remember the cost of community is inconvenience. And I was like, oh, is this a play? Is this a play about us? I had read the book All About Love by Bell Hooks and I think it's such a beautiful book. I really do think everybody should read that book. I just really love how different of a perspective it gives you to love. There's such a single faceted version of love that we see on everyday social media. I think this book does such a good job with deconstructing that ideology of how love is supposed to be. Hey guys, welcome, welcome back to another episode of The Monarch tapes. My name is Nampa and I'm your host. Today we'll be talking about community and just the cost of community being inconvenience. There's two major points of reference that I used for this episode specifically, the first one being All About Love by Bell Hooks and the second being The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. 100% recommend adding those to your reading news. We really love the idea of community. I think as humans, we thrive in community. We say things like, it takes a village to raise a child, but what we forget is villages require work. They require maintenance. They require most importantly us. Community is bound to be inconvenient period because it's going to interrupt your schedule. It's messy. It demands your time. It demands your vulnerability. Demands your willingness to be uncomfortable. And when it comes to the practice of community, especially the part that requires your consistency, your emotional labor, your accountability. A lot of us tend to check out. We want the feeling of community without the commitment. We want to be held without having to hold and there's a big disconnect. And that's one of the biggest things that Bell Hooks calls out in All About Love. She writes that love is an action, never simply a feeling. We feel love for people, but when it comes time to act, to follow up, to make space, to sacrifice convenience, we fall short. And we're taught to think of love as something we feel, but love is what we do. The same applies to community. We've turned it into a vibe, but not a verb. We want a community that makes us feel good, but not one that makes us grow. And real community, real love, it interrupts your comfort. It calls you out of your isolation. It asks for your energy. And that's the piece we tend to skip over when we romanticize what it means, what it means to gather, what it means to bond and what it means to belong. It now becomes a thing where community without purpose becomes performance. And what happens then is performance burns people out. We want to dip, but we don't want to build for it. We want support, but we don't practice showing up. We want belonging, but we're afraid of what it might cost us. So what do we do? We keep things light, we keep things vague, no maintenance. We say, "Oh, we should link soon, knowing, damn well, we're never going to meet up." Because deep down, we know that once we start investing in people, once you open your door, once you open your heart, you don't get to clock out whenever it's inconvenient. In the art of gathering, we're told that gathering, when done with intention, is transformative and not transactional. But many of us tend to treat community like a service. What am I getting from this? Who's feeding me emotionally? Is this worth my time? But if you're always evaluating people based on utility or emotional return and investment, are you really gathering or are you just consuming people? And listen, I understand I get it, time is precious, energy is low, everybody's healing from something. But building community is not a spot A. It's not always soft, lighting, affirmations, it's compromised, it's hard conversations, it's canceling your solo night to show up for a free-duse on the age. Even if you're on the age too, it's built on sitting through someone's grief when you'd rather go home and binge something. It's the friend who comes over to fold your laundry when you're depressed. It's the group chat that actually shows up for the birthday dinner, even when it's raining and their bank accounts don't even get me started. It's the discomfort of conflict that doesn't end in cancellation, but in repair, we have to bring our full selves and that's vulnerable. It's not enough to invite people. You have to be willing to create a container where they feel seen, where they feel challenged and where they are transformed. We keep chasing safe spaces. But real safety doesn't come from everything going smoothly. Real safety comes from knowing that even when it doesn't, people will still show up that someone will still knock on your door, that your mess won't scare them away. Earlier this year, my family went through something very traumatic and it was that time where we realised that community is one of the best things anyone can have. We had family members, we had friends driving all the way from different parts of the province coming to make sure that we're okay at 3am in the morning. Who wants to wake up at 3am in the morning and drive all the way from Johannesburg north to Centurion? No one wants to do that, but because community is inconvenient, community is showing up when you don't want to, but knowing it's going to be there for someone who needs it. I'm extremely grateful for my family and yeah. I'm tearing up, guys. Oh my god, because it was actually really bad. It was so bad, but I'm grateful to God that we're all healthy, safe, alive. Now let's talk about the end times. COVID-19, my goodness, what a time. COVID-19 wasn't just a global health crisis. It was a relational one. It didn't just shut down airports and schools. It shut down. Touch proximity, spontaneity, gathering, joy, and it replaced all of that with fear, with avoidance, distance, the real grief and the part that we're still trying to unwrap is how the pandemic changed us out of intimacy. We stopped hugging, we stopped knocking on doors, we stopped checking in. Bell hooks says that love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust. But during lockdown, our sense of care became flattened. It became reduced to passive gestures, forwarding a meme, a TikTok, a birthday takes, and to be fair, those were like the best. Some of us could do at that time because we're in survival mode, but the issue is I don't think we've fully left survival mode. Because even after the masks came off, a lot of us kept living like we're still in quarantine emotionally. We learned how to cope with distance so well that we've convinced ourselves that it's comfort. Post-pandemic was stuck in the strange paradox where we're more connected than ever. However, we're more connected than ever. However, we're lonely than ever. We scroll past the people we love, we skip stories, we watch each other's lives like spectators, we send voice notes instead of showing up. We say, "Hare for you with no real plans to be." And worst of all, we are confusing the disconnection for healing. We say, "I'm protecting my peace. I'm choosing myself. I'm focusing on me." And yes, those are very valid boundaries matter because of the sacred, but isolation just up a self-care is still isolation, babe. And in us to ask ourselves, "What did the pandemic make me numb to?" What kind of community did I stop reaching for? Not because it hurt me, but because it required me. Who did I stop calling and who stopped calling me back? But the hardest question, "Am I sitting boundaries or am I just afraid of needing people again?" The pandemic gave us an exit route. You could flake without guilt, you could say, "Sorry, I'm not up for it." And no one questioned it because none of us were up for anything. And for the time, isolation felt socially acceptable. It was encouraged even. But what was one survival now looks like emotional detachment? And it's showing in the ways we gather. The way we gather matters. It shapes the way we live. And during COVID, we stopped gathering, not just physically, but emotionally. And that reshaped the way we live now. Where God did with self-protective, were unbothered, were distant. But we're not wired for distance. We are wired for connection, even if it's messy, especially when it's messy. Because if we want community again, real, interdependent, emotionally generous community, we're going to have to unlearn the [BLANK_AUDIO] possible of distance that the pandemic had taught us. We're going to have to learn to care loudly again, to reach out even when it feels awkward, to say I miss you without the buffer of sarcasm, to get that, not just with wine and curator playlist. Definitely, you can still do that 'cause that's a lie. But with purpose, with risk, with open hands, with open minds, with open hearts, COVID has convinced us that survival means shutting down. And Bell Hooks calls this the culture of domination, which is a system that teaches us to survive by isolating ourselves, guarding our hearts, and pretending vulnerability is weakness. She writes in all about love, that true love requires vulnerability and vulnerability to man's openness and trust, qualities that are impossible in isolation. And I really think this is what backs my notion that, you can do all the healing unknown, you can do all the self-love, one of this. But you're not gonna truly know if you're healed, unless you put yourself within community, and you put yourself around other people. Because now, it's not a thing of, I've learned how to heal. You've just learned how to exist with yourself. What happens when you go out into the world, and you actually have to interact with other people. And yes, ideally, it would be very wonderful to just live on a mountain in Japan, like a monk and not to anybody just throw away your phone. Unfortunately, that is not your reality. That's my dream reality. And one day I will achieve it. Don't worry guys, if I just disappear off the face of the earth, just know I'm somewhere in Japan, in those high, high, high mountains, just in an orange jumpsuit bald. But there is a cost to isolation. I call it the isolation text. (laughs) Where it's the price you pay, when you choose solitude over community every single time. And this cost shows up in quiet moments, when your anxiety kicks in at 2 a.m. in the morning, and no one's on the line. When your car breaks down and you don't want to bother anyone, when you try to cook for yourself, but fatigue feels too heavy, your heart feels too heavy, and the loneliness is just louder than it's ever been before. Isolation doesn't make you stronger. It makes you feel smaller, less soft, less capable of love. The longer you stay in isolation, the more you feel like your sense of self has fragmented, and you feel like you start to lose purpose, you start to lose direction. And as much as yes, I am one of the biggest advocates for isolation and solitude, especially when you just feel lost in the world. You're inflexed with everything that's happening, or led once at the same time. The best thing is when you do for yourself, is just switch off your phone and keep to yourself, and just find ground yourself. I don't think humans were made for isolation, I believe, human were built for community. Doesn't matter how independent you are, humans are meant to do this life thing alone. And maybe the real cost of community isn't just convenience, but it's also the courage that it takes to be vulnerable in a world that wants us to stay closed off. We live in a world designed for convenience. Capitalism doesn't just sell products, it sells efficiency, it sells speed, and it sells individualism as virtues. One could say that convenience is capitalism's love language. Everything is optimized, your food gets delivered hot in 30 minutes at least, your mental health care comes through and your friendships can be managed via quick text, filtered Instagram stories. We want everything personalized, instant, and frictionless. But the thing with capitalism is that it low-key has poisoned our sense of community by turning it into a consumer product. It's not just about what we buy, it's about how we show up. This is described as the society of acceleration, which is a world with speed and performance, replace being and relating, where time is money and anything that slows us down feels like a waste and community. Community is slow, community is messy, and community is inefficient. People show up late, they cry at your door, they borrow things, forget to return them, people want your time, people want your energy, and they're not always gonna get paid back for it in kind. Unfortunately, this is what makes community hard in a capitalist world that only fetishizes productivity and individual output. And the irony of it all is that we crave connection but only on our terms. We want friends who show up when it's easy by a disappear when it's hard. I really think realizing that when we only show up for the easy stuff, like the branches, the group chats, the good vibes, we're not building community. We are performing brand-friendly versions of closeness that don't require risk or messiness and row community demands effort and effort means inconvenience, it means showing up when you're tired, when it's not convenient, when the payoff is not immediate. Realizing that love and community are not commodities but they are practices and they are practices that require time and patience and inconvenience. However, I do believe coming to terms with the fact that the cost is the gateway, the intention transforms gatherings whether it's the most mundane reason to the most meaningful reason. It's literally not just about showing up physically but it's about showing up fully with the willingness to be changed, to be challenged and to be connected. When we lean into that inconvenience, we're saying yes to something bigger than ourselves we're choosing depth over convenience, we're choosing love over ease. Being constantly reminded that love is an action never simply a feeling. So it's showing up for the inconvenient moment, the emotional labor, the time investment, the awkward conversations. That's when love is in motion, that's when community is in motion. This is what builds trust, it's what builds safety, it's what builds belonging, it's what turns a group of people from simply a group of people into a community. Community is not about what you get, it's about what you give, especially when it's inconvenient. It means prioritizing people over plans, it means answering the call when it disrupts your schedule, it means sitting with discomfort instead of scrolling past it. If there is one thing that you do take away from today's episode, I think it should be that community is not supposed to be easy and that's exactly why it's worth it. The moments that feel inconvenient, the late night takes the uncomfortable talks, the time spent when you'd rather be alone. Those are moments that build belonging. So here is my personal invitation to learn with me. Let's learn to lean into the inconvenience, to show up for our people, even when it's hard, say yes to the messiness of real connection instead of the comfort of scrolling alone. Because at the end of the day, the cost of community isn't too high. It's exactly what it means to be. It's the price we pay for love, for growth, and for true belonging. And I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so much for listening, we're receiving me and my yapa yapa tendencies. I appreciate every single one of you. I love you so much. Bye.