24. Tending and Befriending: Building my village, Part 2
August 29, 2025
In my last essay, I started a discussion about building your village. By the way, I’m still looking for a new word for this idea of creating connections with individuals in your orbit to provide social interaction, support, and companionship on this journey of life. “Village” is not it exactly, but I’ll stick with this term for now. I like the mental model of a whole bunch of people going about their lives but connected to each other, sharing resources, supporting each other. But it is more complex than that, because each person has their own distinct village, so each of my connections is also the center of their own village. I took a crack at drawing it, and the drawing is included with this essay. I’m the blue dot in the middle, and each of the blue lines coming out from that center are my connection to a person in my village. Each of them also has lines to each of their connections, but in a different color. It creates a woven layer over our world, an unseen set of threads that connects us, holds us, provides shelter for the villages.
Figure caption: Each center is a person, and each line indicates a connection to another person. In turn, each person has their own set of connections, creating a woven tapestry of community.
Friends are the foundation of this tapestry. But let’s step back - what does it meant to “have a village”? What level of engagement are we talking about? There are many ways one might work to build their village. Let’s start with the friends you already have. When is the last time you reached out? When is the last time you thought about reaching out? Follow through on that instinct. You don’t have to commit to plans, just a – “hey I was thinking about you, and I hope your day is going well.” That’s it – that counts as building your village. Even if you don’t get a response, or if you get a response like “wow it’s so great to hear from you and I wish we could get together but things are so crazy busy…” – all of that still counts. It was you sending a small wave of energy their way. If you aren’t feeling up for the engagement that a text may lead to, you can think of them and literally send them good thoughts. Have you heard of metta meditation? Give that a search. It’s “loving kindness” meditation; there are options all over the internet. That counts as an energetic connection. And who knows where that might lead to? It’s a start.
Next, expand beyond your immediate friends. Who are the people you feel most like yourself around? Who are the people who lift you up? Who makes you laugh? Who is always up for something? There are many different types of people in any village. See this as a project – growing and expanding.
After I left my job in March 2022, it became very clear to me how much I counted on interactions at work – in person, on zoom, through emails, through phone calls – to provide me with social connection. I liked the people I worked with. A typical day may have included interactions with 10 or more people. I had friends, yes, and I’d have plans maybe once a month to meet a friend for coffee or wine. Once I was not interacting with people regularly at work, sporadic plans were not enough for me. I decided to make an effort connecting with people, to maintain the level of social engagement that I wanted. As I alluded to last week, I think of it as an investment in my future wellness, since research is showing how important social connection is as a component of health aging, and it makes me happy also. In the past year or so, I designated Wednesdays as my regular “connection” day, to make sure I regularly invest in my village.
I picture a thread of energy from me to them each time we interact through text or email or otherwise. Over time with increased interactions, those threads become thicker and stronger. Even when the connections are sporadic, the thread is still there. I’m weaving a village around myself. And as they are also weaving villages around themselves, we are making a blanket or a cocoon of energy, which might just come in handy in this world.
