“Yeah, I hated high school,” one of my college students said. “It was so typical–all the nerds were kind of ostracized. It wasn’t a happy time.”  Others in class agreed.

“But then, I came here and it was entirely different,” he sent on.  “Everyone is friendly.”   

Here is a college for–well, for nerds, really — smart, talented young adults who design games, digital animation and digital audio mixing.

“You found your tribe,” I told him.

I get it, I do, don’t you?

Belonging to an entire homogenous group never interested me. I always choose friends on a “one from column A and one from column B” basis. So it’s no wonder that I was never a sorority girl. I couldn’t even imagine it.

Still, we’re driven to belong somewhere, somehow. We still want our tribe, the place we belong, where others understand us.

A friend recently wrote about community. She’s been living away from hers for several years and the void is hard for her. While she’s made friends in her new city, she weighs them against her community in another city and they can’t help but fall short.

I like the concept of community and I think I have one, but it’s not traditional, not in any sense. For me, community has never mandated geography, broadly shared interests or even shared roots.

 My tribe is still a motley crew, a Chinese menu of people. They live across the country and across the ocean. They are younger stay-at-home moms and 80-year-olds. They are senior-level professionals and teachers. Men and women. They have nothing in common but ME.

It is, to me, my community.

What about you? I’m interested in what your community’s like.