Why Community Building is about Finding the Way Home

There’s no place like home. The Wizard Of Oz. Photograph: Silver Screen/Getty

“Feels like home”. What does it mean?

Although our childhood experiences of home may differ, almost everyone can relate to an idealistic idea of home. Home is where your heart is. Home is wherever with you. Home is not a place, but a feeling. There’s no place like home. 

Home isn’t a place indeed, but a symbol: from ancient times, humans cultivated the idea of home as the original place where we feel safe. Our mother’s womb, from which departure is our first interaction with pain. Home is a feeling, not a place, which symbology is one of the oldest in human history, as seen in “The Book of Symbols”, curated Ami Ronnberg and Kathleen Martin:

“A house is one embodiment of home; “home is where the heart is,” a feeling state of belonging, safety and contentment. Physically, our earliest home is the maternal womb in which we are gestated, and like the animals who instinctively make their homes in nests, burrows in the earth, the hollows of trees, caves and clefts, many of the first homes of our devising were intimate, encompassing womblike structures. All over the world, cave drawings attest to our primordial presence. Mud huts in parts of Africa are still fashioned in the form of the female torso, with vaginalike slits as doors. (…) To be unhoused is not necessarily to be homeless. On woods, desert, the moon, a ship at the sea, a beloved friend, a particular city, a set of circumstances, is projected “home”. These correspond to, or contribute to something within, the experience of a vital center of both fixity and freedom, rest after striving, being fully oneself. “

In essence,  home is the dream of a place where we are safe. From the same book aforementioned, “Home is the goal of epic odysseys, spiritual quests and psychic transformations.”  Home is an internal state of mind which we crave for. To find this idealistic place, we often have to leave our original place of comfort in search of something which might lead us to a lifelong journey. 

Define: “at home”

1 : R E L A X E D  A N D  C O M F O R T A B L E : A T  E A S E

2 : I N  H A R M O N Y  W I T H  T H E  S U R R O U N D I N G S

3 : O N  F A M I L I A R  G R O U N D :  K N O W L E D G E A B L E]

We aim to find the place where “I belong”. That dream of belonging is home itself. A place where we are accepted as our most authentic selves. We crave this place for reasons larger than our lives - we are wired to belong as a means to survive, which we will explore in chapter 5. In a nutshell, the path of a community builder is that of someone building a home and welcoming others in to share, own and help expand it.

Do You Feel Home, Today?

The world configuration has changed tremendously in the past centuries, and exponentially in the last 20 years.

We’re mobile and connected. Technology transformed how we interact. It expanded our boundaries. We moved from being geographically or ethnically defined to having the freedom to belong anywhere. Information enabled us to find each other online and meet offline. Yet, we are the loneliest generation ever. Loneliness is the epidemic of our generation, which impacts our health in a myriad of ways. We’ll explore it in Chapter 4. For now, I’d like us to stick to the idea that if we are given the opportunity to redesign belonging, we must take it. For our own good - and for that of our peers and loved ones. 

Hacking communities is about building safer spaces for us and others to share in a world threatened by loneliness, the same in which we have the freedom to belong anywhere, expressing ourselves in more groundbreaking, authentic ways.

Things we Associate with Home

- Take off your shoes (Be authentic)

- Say what you want

- Be seen and heard 

- Be understood 

- Be fed 

- Be loved (cared for)

If feeling home is what you wish for, your first step to make others feel home is to create a space where you give them all the above. Noting that one of  the core values of a community builder can be phrased as to Give First (we will talk about core values in chapter 3).

It is about sharing your home with others. It’s not about you alone, but about the people you would like to host. By making people feel at home and safe, not only you cultivate their loyalty, you also do some good to the world by creating spaces (virtual or physical) where they can belong in a world threatened by loneliness.

There’s No Place Like Home

From the Ulysses’ odyssey to Alice in Wonderland and to Dorothy herself, home is the place we crave for, the desired destination that sets our North and defines our path.

Let’s go deeper in the rabbit hole to make sense of it.

In his book the “Hero of a Thousand Faces”, Joseph Campbell says the myth is an actual representation of our psychic journeys. What we aim to achieve, gain or get, is but a physical representation - a symbol - of what we think we’ll look like when we are our most authentic versions. We’re always walking towards ourselves.

At the end of the day,  we are searching for a state of being which feels peaceful, where we can take our shoes off and speak up our minds, knowing that - whatever we do - will be safe. Home is the dream place where you can be your most authentic self and know you won’t be harmed in doing that, but loved. 

While Maslow put “safety first”  in his hierarchy of needs, placing “love and belonging” right after it, our history shows there has been no literal safety to our kind unless we belonged to a group. Just picture yourself hanging out in a savannah around 300,000 years ago, when our species started showing up in the wild. If you were the kind who tried to live as a Lone Ranger, hunting, gathering and fighting lions with your bare hands, you probably would have left no descendants to tell your story.  

Other species may have wondered what’s wrong with this naked ape with a tuft on its head and random body hair. We had to organize ourselves collectively in order to simply survive. In chapter 5, we will dive deeper into the impact of belonging - and the absence of it - from a social and biological point of view.

For now, let’s just stick with the idea that safety implies belonging - at least our bodies understand that. Thus, being home and feeling safe, implies being in familiar surroundings where you feel comfortable to be without thinking, To exist without questioning yourself and to trust that others around you not only speak your language, but also listen to you, taking what you say and do into consideration. They see you, they listen to you.

Building a community is about finding your way home, or rather building a home where you can belong and be your truest self. In doing so, I came to find it is the journey that matters. While we dream of home as a destination, it is the path we walk which makes us find ourselves in it through the people we meet on the way, the obstacles that make us stronger and the stories we collect which build ourselves - as we know us. Yet, that north set by your idea of home gives us a sense of direction. 

Hacking communities is about belonging anywhere and finding that home is the inner journey to your truest self. 

The journey of being a community builder is, first, the journey of getting to know and embracing your truest version.To build a safe space where others feel safe to take their shoes off and open, one must first be courageous to be vulnerable as its host. As put by Brené Brown, courage means “to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart” , going back to the source of the word. The word comes from Latin term “coraticum”, which merges “cor“ (“heart”) and the suffix “aticum” which implies action. Literally, the word meant “a heart act” or “an act from the heart”.  I call it “acting from your core”, which implies being vulnerable.

It is the way  home, like Dorothy’s journey through the typhoon, Alice’s down the rabbit hole and Bilbo’s “there and back again”. Our first step is to recognize and cultivate a sense of home. 

Being yourself, or better put, becoming yourself, is a journey, not a destination. 

The End defines The Path. But the Path is the End.

I know it sounds like something a white-bearded wizard would say before disappearing behind the same bushes it popped up from. And you’d stand there, puzzled and lost.

Let’s but it in common words: what you aim to achieve defines the steps you take.

When planning, you often starts from the end goal, the deadline, and walk back towards your current state to define your first steps. But, while the goal defines your steps, it is though walking each step that you grow as a person, or as a company, in order to achieve your goals.

While we usually do life in a more organic way, our desire guides the way by defining our choices, from smallest to the most epic decisions we make. 

Fran Baum painted it the best way in his book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I’ll take my favorite character, the Cowardly Lion. He lacks courage - or so he thinks. On the way to Oz (where they’ll walk towards together, expecting the Great Wizard to fulfill all their dreams at once), the journey presents challenges to all of them, which require different skills, but every time a challenge requires an act of courage, the Lion steps up to fulfill it, knowing he needs to practice it, for he’s coward. Which he doesn’t like. 

Being a coward makes the Lion feel uncomfortable, just like being heartless makes the Tin Man feel bad about himself. They all feel inadequate about lacking something, something which is essential to them. It is not about “not being enough” at the surface, needing to buy the latest car to feel better - which we will talk about eventually. Frank Baum’s characters share a vulnerable journey, aimed at finding something they deeply care for. 

They share inadequacies which define who they are, in other words: their own understanding of home. While Dorothy’s home is quite a physical place in Kansas, it is a symbol of what all characters are in search for.

As the Lion makes an effort to be courageous when it is required, so the Tin Man is overly concerned with being kind - afraid of hurting someone for being heartless - and the Scarecrow tries harder to solve logical problems.

Courage, heart, brain, home. We’re all in search of that sense of home, a place where we feel adequate. What’s interesting in Frank Baum’s metaphor is that the very thing which they find lacking, is the one each will practice the most throughout the way. And it’s that constant practice, the acting upon the inner version of who we believe we are which makes us become our most authentic selves. 

It is the path we walk towards becoming who we are which defines us.

Belonging to a community is about walking together.

Watch This List! Good Reads for Community Builders

Recommended Books (aka Bibliography)

BROWN, BRENE. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Avery. First Edition 2012.

BUSHE, Laura. Lean Branding. O'Reilly Media. September 2014.

CARRIER, James G. and GEWERTZ, Deborah B. (ed.). The Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology. Bloomsbury. 2013 (printed).

CLARK, Timothy. Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career. Wiley. First Edition 2012.

DIAMOND, Jerry. Guns, Germs & Steel: A Short History of Everybody For The Last 13,000 Years. Vintage. Published 2005.

DIAMANDIS, Peter. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Free Press. 2012 (reprint).

FELD, Brad. Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City. Wiley. 2012.

FISHER, Helen (Ph.D.).  Why Him? Why Her?. St. Martin's Press. Reprint, 2010.

FRIEDMAN, Ron (Ph.D.). The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace. Perigee Book. First Edition, December 2014.

GEERTZ, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretative Anthropology. 3rd Edition, 1985.

GRAY, Dave, BROWN, Sunni and MACANUFO, James. Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. O'Reilly Media. 2010.

HARARI, Yuval Noah. A Brief History of Humankind. HarperCollins Publishers. 2014.

JOHNSON, Michael. Branding In 5 and a Half Steps. Thames & Hudson. First Edition, 2016.

KNOX, Paul (editor). Atlas of Cities. Princeton University Press. First edition, 2014.

LENCIONI, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Jossey-Bass. 2002.

LEMER, Josh. Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed - and What to Do About It (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship). Princeton University Press. Reprint, 2019.

LIVINGSTON, Jessica. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days. Apress. First Edition, 2008.

LISCHETTI, Mirtha (ed.). La Antropología Como Disciplina Científica (Spanish Version). Eudeba, Universidad de Buenos Aires. 1998.

MARKOVA, Dawna (Ph.D.) and MCARTHUR, Angie. Collaborative Intelligence. Spiegel & Grau. First Edition, 2015.

MONTGOMERY, Charles. Happy City. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York, 2013.

OSTERWALDER, Alexander and PIGNEUR, Yves. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. Wiley. First Edition 2010.

SOLOMON, Robert C. and FLORES, Fernando. Building Trust in Business, Politics and Life. Oxford University Press. 2001.

ZIEGLER, Mel; ZIEGLER, Patricia and ROSENZWEIG, Bill. The Republic of Tea: How an Idea Becomes a Business.  The Republic of Tea, Inc. 3rd Edition, 2012.

This list is growing! Would you like to recommend a relevant book?