We all need community – people to live life alongside for better and for worse. For young adults, the transition between childhood and settled adulthood can be fraught with concerns about community. Despite attending college and landing their first jobs, young adults are still often unsure of where they wish to live and work in the long run, let alone whether or with whom they want to start a family. They are often painfully aware of the fact that until they discover their spouse or lifelong career, most relationships and jobs are not “the one.” This is exacerbated by what has been described by some as a lack of commitment (especially when the promise of better prospects call members of a would-be community elsewhere). Unfortunately, this state of affairs makes it difficult to stay rooted in place, and thereby to narrow down one’s options.
The Forces Young Adults Must Overcome
Though young adult life can be exhilarating in its limitless potentiality, it’s also intimidating when the world around you is at worst noncommittal and at best, lacking a sense of belonging. Extreme individualism plus an indifferent economy perpetuate a lack of authentic community. While it’s normal for recent college graduates to feel some degree of uncertainty, it’s a problem that young adulthood itself has been prolonged. One reason for this is American society’s obsession with the individual over the collective and rights over obligations. Authentic community requires laying down roots – a tall order in today’s culture of self-focus and an economy that essentially requires one to live in or near an expensive city full of strangers. This state of affairs exacerbates existing atomization caused by disintegrating neighborhoods and lack of trust in once-authoritative religious, cultural, and political institutions. That the two youngest generations, on the whole, lack religious and cultural affiliations which have so often served as sources of connection and friendship means they are unmoored from specificity of place and shared practices which historically help people forge relationships. As culture grows less local and more global, corporate, and technocratic, young adults must contend with forces beyond their control by choosing, willingly, to become rooted in place.
First, Submit to Obligations…
The philosopher Simone Weil, speaking of the human need to be “rooted in place” in her classic book The Need for Roots, begins by highlighting how rights stem from obligations:
A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.
Why does the relationship between rights and obligations matter for establishing community? If you believe you have a right to a particular community, but feel you have no obligations toward that community, then no real ties exist between you and that particular community. Take marriage, for instance. If you feel you have a right to marry someone, but do not consider yourself under the special obligations of marriage – by definition permanent, exclusive, and fruitful – then your relationship is not marriage in any meaningful sense. Marriage as an institution, prior to its reframing as a right by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, was synonymous with these obligations, even if those obligations weren’t always or were badly met. And if rights are the foremost thing, then tying oneself down to any kind of relationship is folly. Why settle in one place, when you can travel the world? Why sacrifice your time and energy in family formation, when you’re free to do as you please on your own?
…Then, Get Rooted in Place
It turns out that acting on our obligations leads us toward one another, rather than away. The answer to why we are not meant for uprooted existence lies not in the logic of the material world, but within the human soul:
“Man requires, not rice or potatoes, but food; not wood or coal, but heating. In the same way, for the needs of the soul, we must recognize the different, but equivalent, sorts of satisfaction which cater for the same requirements.”
The soul has many needs, and one of the foremost among them is the hearth of authentic community, where hunger for connection is sated and warmth of friendship enjoyed – all of which lead us to the truth about ourselves and our existence, which is for love. Without these things, we grow cold, bitter, resentful, and lonely. That is why recognizing and meeting one’s obligations is the best first step toward establishing authentic community. While finding out how one can help serve others in a personal capacity may appear small and initially fruitless, all the little acts which bring you together and make you dependent on one another are extremely important. Young adults may not feel obligated to their fellow strangers-in-the-city, but starting to might perhaps lead to the establishment of fruitful community in unexpected places, bringing “food” and “heating” to so many in need.
