The better community building conversations focus on possibilities not…
Page 288. The better community building conversations focus on possibilities not problems. There are questions such as what crossroads do we stand for that are right now? What can we build together? How can we improve our lives together ? What talents do we have here that haven’t been fully expressed?
— from Friends, Community & Society (Relationships/Community/Society) · Second Mountain by David Brooks
In the book
The strongest of them are thick — built around a shared moral cause, treating their members not as resources to be used but as fellow travelers on a common mission, with the relationships themselves set at the very center of the enterprise. You build that kind of community on purpose: by holding conversations that dwell on possibilities rather than problems — what could we make together, what talents here have gone unused; by giving it a dependable way of gathering, a regular method that reliably brings people together; and by binding it with the smallest shared rituals, the way even a pot of soup, dressed in a little ceremony, can manufacture belonging. The bonds themselves grow the slow way, one small contact at a time. — Friends, Community & Society (Relationships/Community/Society)