Relative Something

I am feeling particularly grateful for all my communities lately.

Com • mu • ni • ty: (noun)  3. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

First, and most recently featured here in my previous two posts, there is my online community, Brainstorms. Next, there is the group I am missing the most right now, because I normally get to see them three times a week, my LIFA (Lifetime Indoor Football Association) soccer community. Rehab on the strained hamstring is commencing into the 2nd phase, so I hope to rejoin you all before the snow is completely gone.

Then comes my cycling community, which primarily is made up of the folks who I have met through participating in the annual Jaunt with Jim biking and camping week in June. It consists of approximately 150 friends whom I spend an intimate week among, and then, for the most part, don’t see again until the following year. Each year, on the first night of the ride, when we re-meet all the familiar faces, it is as if we have hardly been apart. Luckily, after having done this ride many times, I now also have a subset of friends from that larger group which I remain in contact with throughout the year and with whom I enjoy sharing a wide variety activities, interaction and support.

There is one other athletic community in which I claim membership: Floorball. Once again, due to my hamstring injury, I have been unable to participate for a few weeks, but they are a unique group with whom I share a special bond of love for playing this customized version of floor hockey in the evenings on Wednesday nights in the winter.

Interlaced within a couple of those communities are members of my group of life-long friends that I grew up with in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. I often see that group as overlapping one last community I will mention, easily defined by one word: family.

Our communities enrich and support us in a multitude of ways and play an important role in nurturing our better health and well-being. Within a community there are opportunities to serve and to be served. Together, those two simple tasks provide connections that sure help me to exercise critical aspects of my deeper mental processes.

As a reader and viewer of my postings here, it is more than likely that you are a member of one of my communities, or possibly only slightly removed, and as such, I salute you for all that you provide me in so many valuable ways. Here’s to community.