Everybody wants a village. Nobody wants to be a villager.
We talk a lot about wanting community, but rarely about the labor that goes into being a part of it. These last few months I decided to stop theorizing about what it take to foster friendship and started practicing it.
What I learned really surprised me.
Everybody want’s a village…
The origin of my question around the value of the village came to me a few months ago from a viral clip of Issa Rae on Michelle Obama’s IMO Podcast. In the video, she claimed that she was an “inconsiderate friend,” and it stuck with me longer than it should have.
Initially, I wanted to disagree, but as I listened to the episode beyond the sound bite, I found myself deeply connected to both the listener letter and Issa’s POV.
Not only have I found myself on the side of friendship where I’ve been told that I wasn’t doing enough to show up, I’ve equally been in situations where I questioned if the friendship was truly doing enough to meet my needs.
These failed attempts at establishing deep relationships have always left me wondering: What exactly does real friendship require?
Do I want a community? Yes, of course.
Do I believe I’m the best community member? Not always.
…Nobody wants to be a villager
I’m not ashamed to admit that a lot of my early expectations and desires for community have been self-centered and self-motivated. In a “me first, me always” world that says every relationship is an attempt to fulfill my needs, friendship felt like a cure for my loneliness.
On some level, I understood that to receive the village I must first be willing to be a villager, but I also fed into the narrative that I don’t have to be the one doing most of the work to be deserving of the reward. That I could have the fruits of community without going through the trials of tending to its branches.
A part of me also believed that the labor wasn’t even worth it.
Through life experiences, I learned quickly to equate intimacy with pain and closeness with potential danger. So even when I did try to show up with openness, I found myself guarded, bracing for impact. I painted each potential connection with broad strokes, assuming that at any moment I’d be taken advantage of, mistreated, or abused like I’d been in the past.
Sure, this defense kept me safe, but it was also keeping me alone.
Which leads me to wonder…
Is the village still worth it?
Deep down I’d like to believe so.
In fact, I feel that the very thing I’ve been avoiding (connection, vulnerability, trust) is the only thing that can help me truly feel safe again.
The work, however, lies in becoming a better villager. And this time, not just for my own self-interest, but to meaningfully cultivate the current and future relationships in my life.
So, how do we become better villagers?
This summer, I noticeably put down my pen and picked up my practice. I touched grass. I dilly-dallied. And I started putting in the work to really create the community I’d been craving.
Here’s what I found:
Being a better villager starts with being willing to give without reciprocity (and without resentment).
I’ll just get the hardest, most controversial truth out of the way: at its core, being a villager means being willing to give without the expectation of receipt.
You extend yourself because that’s who you are, not because that’s what you want. You’re gracious enough to pour into others even when they can’t (or won’t) pour back. You’re not holding what was done over them or what wasn’t done against the next person.
When I think of this principle, I instantly think of my grandmother, who cooked a meal for whoever walked through her door, snuck a crisp $100 into your coat pocket, or bathed a baby while you slept. Growing up, I watched her take on things she didn’t have to do for people who could never repay her, not out of obligation, but because she wanted to. She saw a gap and filled it because it’s what the person needed, not because it’s what her ego wanted.
That kind of generosity isn’t performative. It’s quiet. It’s steady. And it’s the hallmark of any real community.
Being a better villager also asks us to be consistent even when it’s not convenient.
There’s a phrase I heard floating around in the digital ether that initially rubbed me all types of ways. It says that “to be in community means to be inconvenienced,” and at first I couldn’t understand what that meant. Why would I want to willingly live a life of inconvenience? Why would I open myself up to discomfort and intentionally remove myself from ease?
Over time, I see how community requires more than just our time, attention, and willingness to show up on our good days when we’re thriving and whole – it asks us to be there when we’re tired, awkward, and unsure what to say or do too.
To cultivate a village, you have to be willing to go out of your way for it.
Scientifically, it’s true too. Did you know that it can take at least 300 hours to develop a close friendship with someone? Other theories, like the 11-3-6 model, suggest it takes a minimum of 11 meetups, each lasting at least three hours, within six months to turn an acquaintance into a true friend.
That’s a lot of plans that have to make it out of the group chat. A lot of calls that would have been easier to send to voicemail that have to be answered. A lot of weekends spent showing up when it’s easier not to.
Friendship requires a lot of intentional effort before it ever feels effortless.
To that end, being a better villager means recognizing the power in the mundane.
It’s the little actions that create lasting impact. The unspoken kindness in small conversations. The soft patience of staying present in the moment. The quiet touch of genuine interest. It’s sending the meme that references an inside joke, asking about how the first day of school went, or simply remembering the name of that guy from the weird date when they don’t.
We often imagine community being something that’s centered around big moments, celebrations, or sacrifices. But more often than not, it’s shaped by consistent repetitions of the smallest acts. Community is to commit to giving and receiving these small gestures and allowing them the opportunity to multiply. These are the threads that bind together real safety, trust, and belonging. Not the grand gestures, but the quiet, ordinary moments.
It’s understanding that your presence is what builds the connection. It’s staying long enough and going deep enough to be known. And it’s being brave enough to let that knowing heal not just yourself but others.
Being a better villager means holding space beyond the surface for the hard and heavy.
It’s not enough to only skim the surface of someone’s story or be there for the highlight reel. There are going to be times where being in community means choosing to sit in the messy parts of life that are muddy and unresolved without rushing to fix them or turn them away. It says with your presence: I can withstand this with you. That we can return to this as many times as it takes and stay as often as it takes and for however long it takes to get through this.
Villages tend to fracture when we abandon each other in our hardest seasons. But they grow stronger when we learn to stay in the rawness of life and meet the circumstances not with answers, but with presence – declaring that someone’s pain, grief, or confusion doesn’t scare you off but gives you permission to be an anchor, even when the storm isn’t yours to solve.
Lastly, being a better villager is cultivating an environment of honesty without repercussion.
Villages can’t thrive on phony pretenses. To truly belong, people need to know they can have (and receive) the hard conversations and be met with care, not just critiques.
Being a better villager means creating a space where truth can live even when it’s hard or uncomfortable. It requires courage to speak with honesty, but it also requires humility to receive honesty without introducing defensiveness.
The strength of a community isn’t measured by how well it avoids conflict, but by how well it carries it.
Speaking the truth is never meant to be seen as a weapon, and honesty without repercussion does not mean words are tossed carelessly. Instead, it’s used as a tool to build up better, more evolved parts of ourselves.
When honesty is met with love, it becomes the ground where growth, maturity, and deeper connection take place. It’s the steady practice of saying, I trust you enough to be real with you, and I trust you enough to let you be real with me.
In this environment, truth becomes a gift, not a threat. And when a village learns to handle truth with tenderness, it becomes unshakable because every person knows they are safe enough to be seen, heard, and corrected without fear of losing their seat at the table.
A final case for the village
The hard truth is that building a village requires becoming comfortable with slow burns, failed attempts, and sometimes unreciprocated effort. It requires putting yourself out there frequently enough until something real takes root.
And that’s what makes the village so rare and so sacred.
It’s a prized possession because it’s something you built, not stumbled into.
It asks something of you – consistency, courage, care – even when no one is watching, even when it’s inconvenient. The village isn’t just a place of belonging; it’s an action that stretches us past self-preservation and into something more honest and more human.
That’ll always be worth it to me.
