"Come together" isn't just something from a Beatles song

I am learning that community is supremely important.

I live in an apartment with four other girls. Three of the girls have their own bedrooms (and in one case, her own bathroom as well) and two share a room and a bathroom. Most of the time, the girls keep to themselves. Separate sleeping arrangements, opposite schedules, different groups of friends and disagreements between us keep us quite distant from one another in the house. We rarely have to share the same space, much less speak to each other. We have completely different personalities and try to stay out of each others' way in a passive-aggressive attempt to keep the drama to the minimum and the peace semi-accessible.

For the most part, this arrangement works. Girls get up. Girls eat radically different meals. Girls do homework. (Except for me, I do job-searching work.) Girls go to sleep at different times of the day. You get the picture.

I cannot help but feel terribly saddened by this arrangement though. I can see how beautiful and compassionate and interesting these women that I live with are! I want to share meals with them, spend time getting to know them, invest deeply in relationships that will last a life time - or at least in relationships that will last until we move out!

I feel like others understand this desire. We live in a world massively comprised of technology that allows us to un-involve ourselves with the real world. Facebook makes it so I can have an overabundance of friends (I currently have 497 friends... that's after deleting many!), Twitter makes it so I can instantly post (mostly) meaningless things, E-mail removes the need to have face to face contact...

I don't HATE technology. If I did I wouldn't be using it. I simply desire deeper relationships than:

"Friend": Hey what's up?
KJ: Nothing much. Just hanging out. You?
"Friend": Same.

Deeper relationships require work and moving into some potentially frightening areas of life. Not every person is willing to let you know what makes them tick on day one. My roommate, Kayla, says that I am not one who is afraid of asking questions. If I am interested in knowing who you are I will ask everything from what your favorite type of pizza is to if you have a good relationship with your parents. For some people, that is frightening. I am working on it. For some people, they live to dive in the deep end head first. (That's mostly me, in case you were wondering.)


I honestly believe that most people are unsatisfied with their relationships in their lives. We were created to be in relationship and when this part is unsatisfied, it leaves us feeling lonely and searching for something to fill the void that has been created. Instead of filling this void with endless hours of Xbox, movies, etc. why don't we seek to learn more about the people around us?

It takes a long time to make a permanent change in our lives. I do not expect my efforts to be friendlier (and a better steward to the girls I live with) to instantly quench my desire to have deep meaningful relationships with the people around me. I just know that by doing this, I might be giving myself an opportunity to learn more about these people that I am spending my life with right now.

I hope that you find this encouraging in your day today. Invite someone over for coffee, or just sit and talk to the person that you are next to. Take some time to really get to know someone who is in your life, but you have no idea what their favorite pizza is or what their family is like. No one is too busy to spend some time fostering better relationships. Not even you.