Sometimes things come to us in such a timely manner, that it restores our faith in the patterns of the universe. After having ignored my ReadBurner & GoogleReader for several days (way too many, don't even ask how long!) I started to wade through through the massive amount of reading I had in front of me. As usual, when I have built it up to that lovely 1000+ (you have to love when it is so many that they will intimidate you with 1000+ and not really tell you how many there are!) I'm skimming subjects and titles. In my haste to clear, I almost skipped over this particular post, but something drew me back. Not only because it was Gary V, but something about the title resonated with some of my recent musings.
http://garyvaynerchuk.com/2008/06/05/when-do-you-know-you-have-a-community/
Gary talks about when you know you have a Community (yes capital "C"). Now, I'm not sure that I can ever be as eloquent as Gary, but I'd like to think I share his passion. His focus is on the social media crowd, but I think his message can be expanded to relationships in all of the varied aspects of our lives. He reminds us all that community = Communication! If you are having a dialogue with just one person, you have a Community.
Gary's words reinforced some of things that have been occurring to me lately. I'm in the process of making a Major move and Major changes in my life. In preparing to make these changes, I have been evaluating the roles that various people play in my life. When Gary talks about needing to remember that it does not matter how many Twitter followers or blog readers, it made me remember that it does not matter how many friends I have collected, how many colleagues admire me, how many business associates I have contacts with. It is about the quality of these relationships. Now, I will admit that sometimes I get lost in believing that the more people I am able to surround myself with, the more people there are to make me happy, to reinforce the positives about myself, in general just to affirm my existence. Occasionally it is nice to be reminded that I don't need anyone to affirm me. What I need is myself and the positive power of a good Community. And Gary has reminded me of that. He has reminded me that I not only need myself, I only need good, supportive dialogue with a single person and I have a solid Community.
I'm one of the lucky ones, I've realized that I have a lot of people in my Community, good people, solid people, smart people, caring and inspiring people. From the people I love, my family, my close friends, some business associates, my Twitter peeps and the sweet people who take the time to read this, I'm blessed with this Community. I have communications with them that range for the soulful to the silly, but in all of these, one thing is prevalent, these are people who in some aspect or another bring something to my life. Education, entertainment, love, compassion, support and sometimes, even the occasional disagreement (which I usually need to wake myself up to something I need to pay more attention to!). It is nice to not have to reduce my Community to a single person, it would be so hard to chose. Instead, I chose to be grateful that I have these amazing people as a part of my life and that I get to have this amazing Ccommunication! So BIG thanks to Gary for reminding me what my Community means to me, what it really is all about and why it is so important to nuture it.
So I leave with you a couple of questions. Who makes up your Community? What are you doing to foster the communication that truly translate into a Community? And most importantly, how often do you let that Community know what they mean to you?
Gloria K. Bell 