One of the tasks of Academia Libera Mentis is to find new forms of community for our youth. We want young people to solve their problems together and form proud groups where they look after each other. This can be quite a challenge, as many of the brightest youngsters are addicted to mobile phones and social media - online worlds in which they do not need to compromise or really get to know others. Those who are not may still live in other kinds of socially, emotionally or intellectually isolated bubbles, disconnected from others.
Consider the story of Daria, a Ukrainian refugee. She came from a warm family and had experienced shared accommodation in places like refugee centres but was inexperienced at living together with dozens of others her own age. Eating together, looking after each other, taking joint responsibility for cooking and cleaning, planning trips and doing homework together, always having the opportunity to joyfully socialise: she had experienced little of this. Her social life before our academy was largely online, interspersed with friends she would meet up with for a while. The reality of an actual 24/7 community was a complete novelty for her.
How did such a ‘normal’ 23-year-old experience community living at Hodbomont? She explains below in her own unique poetic style the shock, joys, and difficulties of finding herself thrust into an actual community.
Rituals.
Well, how absolutely continuous it is!
Ring the bell. It’s 9:30 a.m., lesson time. After trying a couple of different schedules for weeks, we decided it to be this way on one of the Fridays.
The Fridays are dedicated to gathering in the lecture room as a community to discuss what we will do next week, and how we can do better. Better for each other, and better for the whole project. Each person silently decides how to do better for themselves. Sometimes it’s hard to speak during these meetings, as many people have something to say. And don’t be fooled, I am not the shy one!
Cleaning every Wednesday, even though last Wednesday just happened.
Getting annoyed if someone is already using the tool you wanted/needed to use.
Checking your name on the cleaning roster, the cooking roster, which somebody organised during weekends or their free time. Annoyance of being paired with someone you don’t like all that much.
Being called to meetings. Being somewhat annoyed that there is yet another meeting. Being pleased your presence is needed.
Then there are other group activities outside of those official ones: trips together to the local town, drinking by the pond, and playing pool in the attic. Cleaning the beer cans and snacks wraps from said attic.
Repetition of cooking for everyone, washing the dishes, turning off the lights in empty rooms before going to sleep, closing the doors.
Shopping on Mondays, feeding the cat, doing laundry in between.
The shower, morning coffee, talking, talking, talking.
Those tasks, aimed towards the group or towards oneself, blend quite often, and sometimes it gets hard to tell whether we do something for ourselves or for others. In these split moments of this peculiar observation, we might experience the concept of choice.
The Choice.
The choice, the choice, oh my god! One is making continuous decisions about the degree to which one is part of the group or is just looking after yourself and your future.
What do you choose in the afternoon? To sit with yourself, paying attention to your thoughts, figuring out where you are in your life and where to move forward? To spend time in the company of nice individuals, drinking and playing games, feeling young and entertained, with the brief thought crossing your mind: this is what we live for? To stay with your partner, falling deeper and deeper into familiarity, sharing yet another moment together?
The choice of me with them, me versus them, me with them versus somebody else—and all the other possible choices you can make. The choice of engaging or not. Speaking up or not. Letting it slide or fighting back. Decoding a message in a positive or negative way. Helping out or staying out of it. Choosing any of this will mean loss of any other opportunity of that day.
Eventually, you make all of these choices in all kinds of situations and realize that none of them are wrong. They might be misused at times, but all are relevant options for engaging with society.
Some of these choices we are called to make out of responsibility that we hold towards the group, and not out of our real desire. Somebody needs to organise that cleaning roster, that cooking roster, those meetings and tasks. Someone is needed to help with organisation of events. Someone is needed to define the trajectory of the growth of the community. It is connected to the idea that everybody has a place in the society, and each is expected to perform as their established group identity.
Group Identity.
You make a joke once, with slight enthusiasm, and receive three laughs at the dinner table. That doesn’t make you the group comedian or an all-round entertainer. But you repeat it a few more times, with a little more enthusiasm, and people know what to expect from you. They even start initiating, knowing you’ll give a good response. You become the “person for a good time,” and you know this about yourself too. Over time, this identity solidifies, and people expect consistency. But consistency can become a trap…
You might never bring out your sad, cynical, confused, or displeased side with them. You might not be in the mood for jokes but still push through. You might have answered or acted differently otherwise, but this is how they already know you. At some point, you stop thinking about it. The ways you live become who you are. And the sides of yourself you rarely touch might sway away, forgotten.
Are they no longer a part of you? Do we inevitably lose parts of ourselves while performing for others? Do all of us perform—or do some remain true to themselves? And if so, what is truth? Just another performance? Masks and behaviours can change but be aware: some people might miss the old you. Because, in their perspective, rightfully so, they might find you to have changed and become different.
Perspectives, or - You Are Different.
This is something I have heard many times in my life, spoken with both positive and negative intentions. For a while, I believed it—well, there was nobody to tell me otherwise.
This word—“different”—somewhat defined my life as a loner in the past.
I dressed differently, behaved differently, thought differently, saw things differently. And when you are one of the few who are like that in a group, you become the odd one out—with all the consequences involved.
People start creating all sorts of narratives and stories about you, trying to explain you to themselves. They might never share a heartfelt conversation with you, or ask about your reasons directly. They might try to understand you, sincerely, but fail. They might even share their ideas with you, and this is where you must be careful not to give in to whatever suspicions they have. Know yourself better! It is hard to do so when you are young, and oh how easy it is to lean into the whispers of others! Don’t. But if you do, might as well.
A big part of knowing who you are is figuring out what you are not. Their words may just be the beginning of this journey for you.
So, what was so different about me? Or was it unreasonable, all the things people said? Let me end the suspicions. The difference was in how I perceived things. The roles of teachers, homework, fellow students, my family, and even myself in my mind’s vision—somehow unlike those around me. Back then, I thought everybody thought, lived, and felt the way I did. It was hard for me to see another perspective, and it took me some time and life experience to learn this skill. I was bad at it then, which led to judgment from my side. I also considered quite a few people to be weird — and thus, “different.”
And what did I do when I met someone different? I judged the hell out of them. Barely interacted. Looked down. Did not let them into my group. I was territorial about my truth and my difference, even though I was unaware of it.
I have travelled a lot, visited many countries, worked with therapists, and you would expect it entirely broadened my mental horizons, but it helped me just a bit.
Yet when I lived with other people – people I didn’t like, people that didn’t like me, people who had different habits from me, people with other communication styles and reactions and defence mechanisms from me, - surprisingly, this is where it really helped. Probably because co-living is not the same as staying at the same hotel or sharing seats in the bus – I couldn’t really go away when I felt angry, annoyed, tired or irritated. So I cried, and argued, and judged, and yelled, and begged and compromised. I got hurt beyond what I knew was possible from the stranger. I figured to never give people that power over me again.
I still judged, and I still was different from people that I lived with. But I managed to see their perspective. I finally saw how they could be like that, and how my own actions and idea of them could affect them, too. I couldn’t read minds, and I do not possess this ability still, but I figured that people had their own reasons to think what they thought and live the way they did. And that, to all of my fucking disappointment, it might be just as relevant as the way I think and live and do things.
That’s a big and important part of what community living teaches you: the person next to you most likely has another from your perspective. It might be more limited—or, on the contrary, more expanded—than yours. It might be in harmony, or it might conflict with how you experience life and the world. They might have no idea about your way of thinking, and you might never truly understand the way they navigate their mental lives. But your and their attitude towards these differences might define the quality of the time you spend together.
Together.
Do you all gather on Fridays and attempt a round of “musical chairs”? Unfortunately, you only have five minutes each to fully discuss your differences and what can be possibly done with it.
Or do you agree to write letters to one another when speaking feels too difficult?
Do you collectively decide to ignore your differences— not out of malice, but because they feel too deep, too tiring, or too tangled to face?
Do you resent one another? Do you make it hard for “the different one” to be around you, or do you make it hard for yourself?
“How different is too different? How far does your tolerance reach?
Is there a limit to how other someone can be before they're too far from you?
And who draws that line—you, or the group?
Even when someone is thoroughly unlike you, do you keep your mind open to the possibility that their beliefs might be just as reasonable as your own?
And when you can’t see their reasoning, how harsh is your judgment, your behaviour?
Do you respond with distance, with dismissal, or with a sense of philosophical compassion? Are any of these responses unreasonable? Because I say, sometimes going away is a good thing to do, too.
Do not think I have already achieved the greatest heights at this skill, - and yes, ability to perceive another perspective is a skill!
I am still stubborn and very robust within myself and even somewhat hard-headed. But I have learned to treat this part of me with some sort of understanding 😊 (this is the party where warm, congratulatory smile is expected from the reader).
What I found to be important is to attempt our best at consistently reminding ourselves that we are alike, but you are not like me, and I am not like you. I would even dare to put it this way: I am different (to you). And so are you (to me). And it is not some kind of defect or evil fortune, it’s reasonably how the world is.
Repeating this thought might be irritating or tiring at first, but at times can feel extremely sobering or pacifying.
It is harder to do, but better than getting scared in the face of unfamiliar and unknown, shunning it away immediately. This new thought might become part of your worldview, turning into small daily ritual.
And what do we know about rituals? We repeat them, we are not ever free from them, we are bound by them, ruled by them.
Yet, if chosen right, those rituals might just serve us and humanity well.
Afterthought
I read above the story of a bright young woman, whose Eastern European English becomes disarming after a while, trying to come to terms with community living for the first time in her life. In mere months of community immersion, she learns compassion and perspective, something years of previous therapy could not give her.
Also, what Daria learned aged 23 might have been learned much earlier in life by members of previous generations who’d lived in communities their whole lives. Indeed, young people from very religious communities like the Amish take all the above for granted for they have been in close communities all their life, having to compromise and find their place from an early age. But for most people from cities and large villages, Daria’s background is completely normal.
Living like a community is a lost art to most in this modern world, making ‘us’ easy prey to large bureaucracy and mass-media: we have no extended group of real, flesh and blood people to fall back on, so we can be pushed around to believe anything and do anything. Having nothing to defend and be proud of, we drift along, essentially alone. So though it is difficult to deal with the reality of other people, relearning the art of community living is essential to personal growth and leadership.
In Daria’s story you also see the many ‘rituals’ that we employed and developed to help her and others become a community:
- A steady learning schedule. Academic learning from 9:30am to 1pm. Then lunch, then aesthetics, homework, exercise, and other social activities.
- A duty roster for cooking and for other community chores, like putting out the lights late in the evening, cleaning up after parties, and closing the doors.
- A common ‘cleaning hour’ on Wednesday afternoon where everyone helps clean the whole place.
- A ‘community hour’ on Friday afternoon where the activities of the next week are discussed, including new student-led initiatives.
- Sessions with attentive listening, where people rotate (like ‘musical chairs’) so that individuals get 5 minutes with each other to openly discuss the communication problems they have with each other.
- A school song called ‘Minds that Dare’ – devised by Daria – that is sung during celebrations.
- Joint ‘beautification projects’ where students paint, sculpt, garden, and make moving music together. They hence practise artistic expression on the castle grounds themselves, making them proud of their campus.
In future years, the experiments with community living will continue as each group of students throws up new problems they find important and want to address.
What is a healthy diet and who decides that diet?
How can shy people talk to the opposite sex without feeling mortally embarrassed or judged by those more practised in the arts of seduction?
What is the most healthy way to use new technology, like AI, in education and community, while not falling prey to alienation and addiction?
We do not yet know the answers to all of these questions, but we will figure it with the students. More Darias will have their own tales.
interessant om dit te lezen. Hoe moet/kan je je opstellen tov anderen. carl jung geeft mij de volgende inzichten indien je merkt dat anderen niet jouw realiteit zien jung had het specifiek over speciale percepties maar je kunt dat mijns inziens ook vertalen naar licht “ jouw waarheid” en “schaduwkanten” die voor iedereen anders is. :
Wat niet tot bewustzijn wordt gebracht, komt als noodlot.
Met je irritaties aan anderen, zie je je eigen schaduwkant (spiegel).
Hoe groter de negatieve emoties(boos, angst, haat, jaloezie, ontkenning, spijt, zorgen), hoe meer deze persoon uit balans is.
Het is makkelijker om de persoon(=de spiegel gever) aan te vallen, dan je eigen schaduw te zien. (psychologische defense)
Hoe meer je de agressie/kwaad in anderen, bv. Putin(spiegel), ziet. Des te meer zegt het over je eigen schaduwkant en onbalans. Valkuilen: dat je iedereen moet redden, denken dat zij jouw nodig hebben, of terugtrekken/verlaten. Verlaag je ego tot bescheidenheid, in stel je in dienst van, hulp en ondersteuning van de groep/samenleving.
Schaduwintegratie(acceptatie) maakt je een completer mens!
Meditie, het-naar-binnengaan en zelfreflectie geeft je inzicht, hoe je het beste kunt integreren met je omgeving en visualiseer wat en hoe voor jouw werkt.
Je dient de evolutie het beste wanneer het geintegreerd is in je persoonlijkheid. Deze superieure perception/inzichten dienen de evolution het beste, als het bewust geintegreerd is beter dan wanneer je onbewust hieronder lijdt. (martelaarschap/isolatie).
Beautiful story thank you. If only
our economic system encouraged this type of living over short term
speculative property flipping that delivers the ubiquitous passive income narrative. To more stories like this!