It’s Always Self-Care, and Not Community Care
Notes on the importance of community, especially now.
Sundaze Book Café is the home of everyday magic, joyful living and conversations likely to be had over a hot drink with a friend in your favourite café, capturing the syrup-slow feel and glow of a Sunday. I’m Michelle, and I’ll be your host this Sunday.
If there’s one thing about me, it’s that I must endlessly search for meaning in every moment of my life. From friendships ending to why I’m such a people-pleaser, I ruminate it all to exquisite, excruciating detail and then love to panic about the oversharing after.
But it’s not always good to be so deeply introspective and about the ‘self’.
What about community?
In September, when driving to my boyfriend’s place, I was followed home by a man in their car. Misguided in their road rage (he almost crashed into me using the wrong lane on a roundabout), he tailgated me down big roads and smaller ones, then proceeded to rap on my car window, as I parked a few houses down from my destination, to scream a torrent of misogynistic, ageist and racist abuse at me. A few days later, I talked about it on my Instagram Stories and was met with hundreds of kind responses, many of whom rightly encouraged me to report it to the relevant authorities. Of the hundreds of responses, at least half also stressed to me to ‘take it easy, be easy on yourself, be kind to yourself’.
I replied: ‘I’m always kind to myself – it’s a shame others aren’t.’
And I don’t mean it in a snarky way.
I mean that we’ve completely lost the essence of community in areas that aren’t our own carefully curated and shaped online corners.
I mean that we’ve become thoroughly individualistic and quite more concerned with the self than perhaps our impact on others, or how we can all meaningfully contribute to a could-be thriving community.
How many times do we shoulder the blame for things like this happening to us? When a woman sadly goes missing and her body found hours, days, weeks later, we unite in an outpouring of grief and rage. When a racist attack happens and we unite in shock, embarrassment, surprise, anger, sadness. Then, like clockwork, there it is.
She should’ve worn something less appealing (to men), women shouldn’t tie their up (it’s easier for attackers to grab), women should do this, they shouldn’t do that, you’re in OUR country now and should ‘act like it’. Be kind to yourselves.
And how much longer can we continue to be any kinder to ourselves before somebody else is kind to us, for once?
I’ll savour my morning tea as I perch on the stoop in my back garden, my dog playing with the dewy blades of grass before me. I’ll laden toasted sourdough with kaya – coconut jam – that Dad lovingly brought home from Malaysia. I’ll show my body some love and spend some time at the gym. I’ll treat myself to a biscuit as I take my 3pm break and read some of my book. I’ll let myself smile as I watch golden sunlight breaking through what’s left of the autumn leaves. I’ll take an Everything Shower or run a bubble bath.
But, I cannot switch off from the cycle of globally devastating news and war crimes, the stripping of women’s rights, the brutal systems that wreak havoc on the working class and underprivileged, the everyday racism many communities (including I) endure often, the… and… then…
The same sentiment can be applied to many experiences of modern life in 2024. A few taps through my Instagram Stories this summer were particularly jarring: soul-shaking scenes from Gaza, *tap*, 10 must-haves from Amazon Fashion, *tap*, evil rhetoric from a then-candidate-now-victor of the US election, *tap*, your guide to the vanilla girl aesthetic.
How silly of us to consider there’s a world outside of ourselves.
And I know I love introspection as much as the next Substack thought daughter girlie, but isn’t now the exact time, if not months and years sooner, to reject a vanilla aesthetic or existence, and to be kind to ourselves and kinder to those around us?
When we consider the community first, we all benefit. From helping an elderly neighbour with their groceries to bringing a big pot of food to the family that brought home a newborn, from mobilising and joining a protest to writing to your local MP (or equivalent) vying for better decisions, there are a wealth of ways to contribute to the community.
I’ll finish this impassioned piece with the words of Kamala Harris’ own closing speech:
You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world. And so to everyone who is watching, do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organise, to mobilise, and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.
Great piece Michelle! The only kind of individualism we should be cultivating is in bettering ourselves so we can better be of service to something larger than ourselves. <3
Totally agree! The trend towards individualism is clearly a long term one driven by other structural changes but increasingly I see it glorified in the guise of self care too: cancelling on people when you don’t feel like it in the name of self care, putting your own needs first always etc. Aside from being totally counterintuitive (there is so much research on the importance of community and relationships to individual wellbeing, above almost any other factor) but if everyone is putting themselves first all the time, where does that leave us collectively? But the more isolated we become, the more brands can make from selling us face masks I guess.