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Over the holiday period, i was grateful for the chance to down tools and mindfully not do. But something quietly simmered in the back of my awareness nevertheless. And it was this. The project's founding documents name several different agendas. This post explores a working theory about their priority.

If we take a look at the project's website, the home page has the main heading "Build Relational Capacity and Find Belonging". Even though there are additional references to other things (such as finding contribution, meaning and purpose), my inquiry specifically concerns the harmony and the tension i now imagine as being present between these two principle drivers.

Clearly there are cross connections between these two things. I have to trust the people i practice with, but the people i practice with, i come to trust. But does it work in both directions the same? The vision booklet hints at a priority: "Our why tells us that practice is at the heart of the work of this project". But its buried on page 13.

In the 90s I was involved with building ecovillage and cohousing projects. The one i know best is Earthsong, and it had two stated threads woven into its mission: cohousing and permaculture. The astute were quick to realise that each member joined with one or the other, as their primary driver. But with the passage of time, we all learned the same unexpected lesson, that our one main focus would become, simply learning to work together.

So when it came to helping create the TCP's constitution, a more explicit development agenda was at the forefront of my mind.

Now, with TCP i am getting this same sense of a bi-dimensional agenda. Lets name it as:

• to belong, to find a supportive community
• to practice, to build relational capacity

Now in The stickiness of desire i wrote (incidentally) about whether belonging is an absolute need. We can summarize that by saying that mammals do biologically expect group formation, PVT tells us that safety is primarily derived from membership of such (stable) groups. OTOH we can hypothesize that the need to belong is potentially somewhat negotiable from an emergent point of view.

So the question that wants to be asked is, which comes first, belonging or practice? This is an interesting question, and one that wants to be spoken of in two separate frames, the project's and mine personally.

I want to propose putting the founding documents aside for a minute, and try to examine this matter from first principles.

Let's first define some terms.

Practice

I want to define practice as repeated activity for the purpose of stretching, and developing capacity. The emphasis is on repeated.

Yes, i can technically practice a craft or trade, by showing up on a given day and doing my thing. But, we didn't magically gain that skill. We gained it through repeated trial and error. Through 10,000 hours of doing the thing.

So the word practice has two meanings, doing a thing (eg: being authentic, getting their world, revealing my experience). And the repetitional doing of the thing in order to learn the thing. From a developmental frame, if we never stop learning, never stop growing then the latter definition is calling to prevail. Nonetheless, this seems like a trap for AR practitioners, because AR itself has the same pair of definitions, a way of relating, and set of tools to learn over time how to relate.

While i believe some people do hold the former definitions, in both cases i hold the latter as the most important. Practice as applied repetition.

Connection v attachment

Belonging speaks less to connection as a one-off thing, and more to repeated connection, or familiarity. The literature calls this bonding, or attachment bonding.

When we come together to practice repetitionally, we inevitably bond or attach. A friend once defined attachment as connection done over time.

Connection is something that could be conceived of as a thing we do from a place of presence, in real time. That i can in theory connect with anyone, it doesn't matter if i know them or not. Whether they are a friend or loved one, or not. With enough trust, mindfulness and skill there is no reason why i cant connect and relate with care and generosity even with a complete stranger, across unfathomable divides of race, politics, religion, age, gender, whatever.

Attachment as a science originates with Bowlby, Ainsworth, Harlow, Hazan, Shaver, et al. It says something like, an important part of human well-being is the formation of long term bonds that serve as a secure base from which to negotiate and explore the world. It's part of the way our nervous system relaxes enough to digest food, and sleep peacefully, by having trusted others around us. That trust comes from experience, from the repetition of (good enough) relational connection.

These more mindful conceptions of real time connection (devoid of attachment) are of course aspirational. Humans are simply not that conscious, and likely never will be. We bring not only vast neurobiological nervous system limitations around novelty and the risks associated with new experience, safety and threat, not to mention all sorts of relational baggage from developmental trauma.

The chicken and the egg

If i cant grow until i belong, how do i practice? If i cant belong until i gain enough capacity, how do i get that capacity?

Something i noticed when i practiced at both ART and TRC. I can practice with strangers and its fun, stimulating and fairly light. There is somehow less expectations, less commitment, less fear of exposure.

But in pursuit of practice repetition, showing up subsequently to the same platform means encountering the same faces again.

We cant practice repeatedly without coming together repeatedly, and so attachment and practice become intertwined.

With attachment seems to come assumptions, expectations, projection, and conflict. The bumping up against old development wounds. Pop psychology tells us that this is the organisms inbuilt impetus to heal, to grow. While wounded in relationship, we heal in relationship. We draw to us the people we need to help us develop.

Maslow considered belonging to be a need, and one that is some way up his pyramid. Sinek and others are now saying its actually even more foundational, that it's a precursor to meeting our other needs, food, sleep etc. Some aspects of the project's verbiage speak to the idea of support for growth, 'we don't have to heal on our own'. So here again we have this idea that community and growth work together.

Now if we take belonging as a ancient physiological need, and one that is increasingly impacted by various forces of social atomisation, the resulting dysregulation might propel us to seek support and community as a priority driver. No matter whose model you look at, belonging seems like a precursor to self-actualization.

For example, when hungry (or lonely), personal development takes a back seat. So a possible concern here might be that if my primary driver is belonging, practice might take a back seat.

Now if we turn all this around, if i hold practice up as my primary driver, (temporarily putting belonging on hold) and apply myself to the task of practice, then belonging probably automatically follows. If so, it does so not only through the repetition that both dimensions demand, but because the practice, when done with attention and insight, brings with it an enhanced and continuously expanding capacity to relate. The better i am at it, the more i want to, and the more i am able to hold it.

The upside of this approach is it places me in a better position to deal with the inevitable friction. Because i have repair skills, without which the relationship just flys apart. The end result is that both belonging and practice are sacrificed.

I have previously discussed the need to practice not just AR but also collaboration per se. If by attachment, we mean showing up in way that is consistent, engaged, builds trust, and that mutually and reciprocally supports each other, then those are all skills honed by practice. To attach well is to relate or connect more consciously. The two practices come together. By practicing AR, i can better practice the craft of AR. By practicing belonging, i can better practice the craft of attachment.

All of this is hinting to me, that practice comes first.

My why

I don't think i can complete this exploration into the project's whys without acknowledging my own.

Here is the short version: Unknowingly, i spent most of my life walking sleepily in a dorsal coma. One day, i met someone who helped me understand that. Only then was i able to see the wonders that lay beyond that limited horizon. That life is in fact wonderful, was a new idea that came packaged directly along side how much joy comes from being more deeply connected with others. That is, when i can get out of my own way.

My why, if such exists, is that understanding how a traumatized nervous system cuts itself off from connection opens a door to new and positive relational experiences. Experiences that are very intimate, safe enough, joyful, exciting, and frankly quite marvelous. Do i want to share that with others? Sure. Do i want to create a movement of change around this idea? You bet!

Wrap up

I see AR as a relational fitness practice. It's no different to going to the gym to get my physical body in shape. I don't go to the gym just once, or just occasionally. Nor do i do a different exercise each time i go. The benefit is in going 3 times a week, repeating the same drills over and over. AR is no different, it's exactly the same.

Face to face, online, its all good. Whatever it takes. Maybe practice is not just king, its everything. If so, then practice leads to belonging. Practice leads to all the other intangibles like finding meaning, purpose and contribution. OTOH, if we neglect practice, can we really hope to realise the dream laid out in the vision booklet?