CHAPTER 1

Longing for Connection

One of the truths of our time is this hunger deep in people all over the planetfor coming into relationship with each other.

—M. C. Richards

We all want meaningful connections to those we love, to the places we live andthe people with whom we share a neighborhood, a town, a country, a world. Wewant to feel that we're seen, known, and appreciated; we want to contribute, tomake a difference in the world. We want to feel part of a larger whole, that ourindividual lives aren't, in the words of Daphne Rose Kingma, like a "crueljoke." In a word, we long for community.

And yet, such connections seem elusive, particularly now. We are so busy, webarely know our fellow apartment-dwellers, much less the old lady in the houseon the corner. And when we do reach out, it seems that within a few months, we—orthey—have moved on to the next job, the next relationship, the next town.

Our world is changing, and life seems to be sweeping us along with it. Aftertens of thousands of years of slow, almost incremental development, we aresuddenly at a point in history when change itself is the moving force, movingfaster and faster beyond what we can comprehend, much less keep up with. Theprocess of that change is often blazingly apparent: the gadgetry of modernliving invades our days, the bright lights and screaming electronics providingever-present background noise and distraction. There is an aura of almostelectrical excitement in the atmosphere as we move from cars, planes, and Nordictracks to our computers, microwaves, faxes, and e-mail. Our mastery over ourphysical surroundings has brought us to the doorway of incredible possibilities,and yet we know intuitively that it has come at a price. We are beginning torealize that the most pressing challenge we face today is not technological, notto build a better machine, but to grow up as a species, moving past our recklessadolescence and taking conscious responsibility for our behavior. We are alsochallenged to find new ways of being connected to one another and to the Earthitself.

It is a task we are ill prepared for. We have spent most of our history in thethroes of adventure, exploring, expanding, inventing, and conquering. Thepractice of introspection, contemplation about the meaning, weight, and purposeof our existence, has been largely the province of academic and spiritualleaders. The rest of us have simply tried to make do, dealing as best we canwith the challenges of daily life. The weightier decisions, the power andresponsibility for bending the flow of history, were out of our grasp. This isno longer true, for one of the side effects of the world's growing acceptance ofdemocracy— combined with extraordinary advancements in communicationstechnology— has been the steady emergence of public opinion as the ultimatesource of power.

Political leaders can still lead and persuade, but the days when they could benda nation's direction to their wills are fast disappearing. World opinion has anincreasingly deeper and more profound influence on the behavior of supposedly"sovereign" states. Slowly, almost outside of our range of perception, thebeliefs and opinions of individuals all over the world are becoming not onlymore clearly articulated and understood, but more powerful.

With that increase in power comes a parallel increase in responsibility, andthat too is something people are beginning to take more seriously. From theinternational grassroots movement to ban land mines to the extraordinary globalenvironmental movement, individual people are assuming a greater degree ofpersonal responsibility for worldwide issues and are acting on it to an extentunimaginable just a few decades ago. We are recognizing how interconnected weare, how much of a global community we can be, but we are uncertain what formsthese connections will take.

That's because the rhythm and structure of what we know of community iscenturies old. Our way of feeling connected to a place and to the people of thatplace has not changed significantly in the tens of thousands of years oforganized human history, and now, seemingly suddenly and irrevocably, virtuallyevery old form of community is collapsing all around us. Small towns arebecoming big cities or are being swallowed up by even bigger cities; extendedfamilies are spread out across the land; ties of tribe, clan, and region haveceased to fulfill the comforting task of locating us intimately within acommunity. The bonds that once held us have been broken, and we are left with adisturbing unease, a sense of being cast adrift. We are no longer sure where wefit or where we can turn for comfort and a sense of belonging. In theory ourcommunity has expanded globally, but in the marrow of our bones most of us feelcut off and alone.

This is a modern human problem. For most of history, belonging to a communitywas taken for granted. Whether clan, tribe, small town, or big-cityneighborhood, it was there people were born and raised, and it was withincommunity that individuals struggled to find their place. The fact of communitywas a given; the fitting into it and the defining of the individuals within itwere the issues. In our lifetimes, for the first time in history, the groundrules have shifted. We grow up with breathtakingly unlimited opportunity to findour own ways, but in increasing numbers we grow up outside the steady comfort ofany true community; the absence of that all-encompassing caress leaves usfeeling deeply disconnected.

The Community of Kindness has grown out of our experience with the "Random Actsof Kindness" movement. As the publishers of three bestselling books, we havespent a great deal of time thinking about why the Random Acts of Kindness seriesstruck such a chord; why, at last count, eleven countries, 40,000 individuals,15,000 schools, 1,000 churches, and 450 towns, cities, and counties in theUnited States are participating in Random Acts of Kindness week in February. Asthe years progressed and the kindness movement grew internationally, it becameclear that the success of the books, and the desire to do good deeds, random orplanned, results from the sense of community created by performing such acts.When we feed the meter of a car about to get a ticket, we connect to the personwho owns that car, even if we never meet. When we leave a bouquet of flowers ona neighbor's doorstep because we've heard he's having chemotherapy, we forge abond, if only briefly. And when we read about such actions, we connect not onlyto those who have performed such deeds, but to the tribe of all others who arereading about them. It is out of our longing for...