The Commerce of Community 9-3-9

Highway 81, Anderson, South Carolina

This morning I was out driving after my ‘usual’ bike ride, my destination being one of the ubiquitous neighborhood pharmacies that have suddenly sprung up over night; like mushrooms in a damp climate. These pharmacies are in continual price wars to garner market share, with food and cleaning supplies often heavily discounted. Because of a major craving for cold cereal I was on a mission to take advantage of the two for one deal at one of these pharmacies for Kellogg’s raisin bran. Alas, it was the only cereal out of stock. Apparently it is used as medication - acting as a mild laxative.

A most helpful stocker was using her infra-red wireless data capture device to inventory the cereals. With an amazingly radiant smile, she offered to write me a rain check, sensing my raisin deficiency. She went in back and several minutes later emerged with a filled out coupon. It seemed important to her to have done this. I suddenly realized the great prize was not cheap raisin bran; rather it was the opportunity to experience a fleck of community that happens when someone does her job really well in providing service to a patron. I knew I would use that rain check, even if I found generic cereal twenty three cents cheaper somewhere else; feeling a need to invest in our speck of temporary community.

For many years there has been a ‘funny’ man walking up and down the highway and the nearby crossroads. ‘Funny’ in that he walks countless miles with a peculiar strut; wears an unusual little hat and blackout glasses and always seems overdressed for the climate. I and others who see him have always figured something was not quite right about him. But isn’t that true of all of us? As it is, we tend to stay away from those who are even remotely a bit different than ourselves - xenophobic to the max.

As I left the pharmacy with my rain check for cereal, I saw this man walking along the pedestrian-toxic highway. While driving about forty miles per hour I found myself trying to catch his eye. For a fraction of a second, our eyes locked despite those dark glasses. I raised my index finger from the steering wheel to acknowledge him. Amazingly, he noticed this and raised his, surprised and uncertain if I was really greeting him. Suddenly, we were two acquainted people who recognized each others’ being. Suddenly he is no longer this funny little man on the street but a fellow being who reflected gratitude at being seen, visible and significant; not just a curiosity slinking along the verges of the highway. It cost me nothing to raise my finger to a strange stranger on the road and it cost nothing for an inventory clerk to be helpful. Community usually costs nothing to build.

There are about one hundred people on the east coast of India who have a major deficiency of all things material and relational in their life. Indian society at large has declared these people to be disposable funny little men; orphaned, destitute, uneducated, and infected and disfigured with leprosy. Every month I go down the funny man’s highway to the Western Union in the local grocery, just beyond the pharmacy, and wire enough money to allow these one hundred disenfranchised beings to eat for the next month and buy a few other things such as fabric to make clothing; to even maintain a bit of dignity. I just raise my index finger to these people through the agency of Western Union. Images sent to me regularly by the headmaster of the facility suggest it is really possible to have a form of community and solidarity with these people that is very substantial, even at such a great distance. Next year it is my goal to cross twelve time zones and sit on the floor and eat rice with them, out of stainless steel bowls with my hands, just as they do.

The funny highway man here is like many in India, lonely in a crowd, excluded from the mainstream, shunned, because of some perceived short coming or defect. So many of us in the most affluent land in the world have our own personal, often invisible deficiencies. All of the consumer gadgets, boy toys, and diamonds do not touch the profound need we have to be connected and belong to each other. Of themselves, they are but solid waste in a secular consumer culture.

On Monday I was in the YMCA on one of the rowing machines on the fitness floor. I fell into a bit of conversation with a total stranger. Thirty e-mails, several phone calls, and a couple of meals later, there are two fewer strangers on the planet. We have a community of two that has read all the same books, likes the same movies, ad infinitum. The YMCA is a truly safe place to experience friendship and to nurture seeds of friendship so I went out on a limb and offered my friend a lunch special - via e-mail. She could have both chunks of flounder. I would get both piles of shrimp and a cheap date. She took the bait and was quite happy with the arrangement as she does not eat shrimp. The $5.34 investment (including tax and tip) has paid off spectacularly. So often experiences of community might last a very short time; even a single second, as with the funny man. This investment has yielded a community experience lasting five days now.

In little more than a week I will climb up into the cerulean sky to experience the world as a gift from … the world. For a month the world is mine courtesy of British Airways which decided I needed to experience the world their way. Rebecca will gas up her RV and again take her vision quest to the road. She is an intrepid soul and lives in an RV and explores the world solo. We may never cross paths again but we have made a little proof, to ourselves at least, that small investments can pay off big time, even in the short term.

Next time you encounter a stranger - be really nice. And keep five bucks in your pocket. You might be talking to your best friend.