Throw a Party (Or Don’t): How to Connect With Your Neighbors and Build Community
This past month, my dad turned 70. (Hi Dad!)
He’s been retired for a few years and while he isn’t working for money anymore, he’s definitely still working: working to understand the world, working to connect with people, working to experience life in new and exciting ways.
When he first retired, he started volunteering fairly quickly for a nearby food bank. Then he joined his local Indivisible group and helped organize gatherings. And somewhere in there, he found a group of older men who, like him, enjoyed getting outside, walking, and talking together about philosophy and history, struggling together to understand today’s current happenings.
For more than forty years, he had been paid to gather and care for others; in retirement, while the shape of this has changed, the impulse to gather and care with others is clearly still there.
(He also spent his first year of retirement being one of those old guys at Mariners games ushering folks to their seats. In one way, an ideal gig; in another way: have you seen the Mariners these days? 🤮)
And I think this impulse is especially familiar to people who work in caring professions, like my dad did. Teachers, nurses, social workers, nonprofit workers, therapists, and others often spend their days creating connection for other people.
It can be easy to assume that kind of work only happens in our professional roles, but the impulse to gather and care doesn't necessarily disappear when the workday ends.
This weekend, at the ripe old age of 70 years and 23 days, he decided to celebrate his birthday in a new way.
By invited his neighbors – not friends; in fact, mostly semi-strangers – to get together. Having lived in the same place for seven years, he knew quite a few folks. He knew their faces. They had met crossing paths or getting the mail.
But he knew he didn’t really know them.
And more than that, he knew he was an extrovert – he happily talked to folks out and about. But what about the other folks around who had a much harder time bridging that gap?
How many neighbors didn’t really know any of their neighbors?
How to Connect With Your Neighbors
After talking it through with my mom, he picked a date and location, hired a local band, printed some flyers, spent a few weeks mentioning it to folks, bought some food – and voila!
A relaxed, conversation and music-filled evening party in their courtyard ensued.
Here's the reason I share this:
My dad isn’t a brilliant party planner. He didn’t have a huge budget. And he had no idea how many folks would show up.
But he was curious. And he knew that some connection would be better than no connection.
And that was worth the attempt.
He’s a reminder for me this week that it doesn’t take a heroic effort to weave community together. It doesn't even require throwing a party! Sometimes it's enough to simply be more available to the people already around us.
If hosting a party feels like too much (or wayyyyy too much), it's okay to start small!
If you live in an apartment or condo complex, you can do what my friend Pat does and just start spending more time in your shared areas.
If you’re at street-level, you can be like my friend Colleen and spend time gardening, looking up often and with a willingness to say "hello."
Or if you're like me, stretched for time and energy, just try saying hey to people while you're out and about. It's amazing how connective such a simple thing can be.
(And if you do want to throw a party on your block or in your building, here is a quick how-to guide from my colleague Kat Vellos.)
In the words of Priya Parker, “Gathering is a form of power. Gathering is a form of love.”
None of us can solve the loneliness epidemic or ensure that everyone has a tight-knit community around them. But we can do our part to make it a little easier to belong.
📬 Share this with your people:
