One of the outdated ideas from modernism, is that building a life will be a lot like writing a book, or chiseling a statue: a primarily solitary act of creation, where the individual evaluates himself and his engagements, imagines a better future, and plots a course to that better future.
For as long as you're embedded within a stable community, this framing works alright. You judge various components of your life, and attempt to make changes, failing or succeeding to various degrees. You behave like a more-or-less sane captain of a ship, who faces unknown weather and the occasional storm, but stability of intention.
But this image is wrong in its solitary aspect. It misses the role of community like a fish would miss the water in explaining how it swims and steers.
Large life changes are discussed in intricate detail with those closest to you, from idea, to execution, to retrospect. Friends react with pleasure or disdain to new ideas or jokes, and this determines whether you'll carry them forward or drop them. If you buy a new hat and all your friends honestly (not just playfully) hate it, you will definitely stop wearing it.
It's not that individual will and intention have no place to play, it's just that it doesn't come in on the ground floor of the blueprint of the self. They say that you are the average of the five people closest to you. That's the input with real leverage. In fact it's only from a stable social base that we can even hold on to beliefs and intentions over the long haul at all.
I've uprooted myself a lot and seen this happen in myself. Beliefs, habits, and attitudes that seemed rooted deep within my core suddenly become liquid, each time the people I've grown close to are no longer in my life. There is a core to me that stays constant (genetic? cosmic?), but it's way further down than I expected.
It makes me wonder sometimes about people who traveled far in the past, on ships, where you couldn't call or email and even letters were largely infeasible. They must have turned into such different people - first on the months-long ship ride, then again when they landed.
As I regrow my roots into the social soil of Estonia, I wonder what I'll be like as it all firms up.
And this brings me back to LIFT, where I've been growing these new social roots. There is a certain character to the people who go to coworking spaces, and a certain character to the Estonian startup community, and then the particular flair that LIFT itself adds.
You'll find yourself marinating in and around conversations about, of course, entrepreneurship and self-starting. But you might also hear, say, someone casually talking about their decision to take a sabbatical from work for several months, to focus on personal growth. And then the rich diversity of background is a constant source of dynamic conversation and new insights, at the intersection between self and other.
Because we all come from different places, the culture at a coworking space is something rather emergent, and there is a lot of space relax into and express oneself. And yet the very existence of the community still gives one a place to grow into, and find stability in. It's a fortuitous pairing: grow your roots into stability, into a soil with its own particular profile, but grow your leaves into an open space with lots of sunlight.
I'm slowly rebuilding some internal stability these days, and watching who I'm becoming.
I've become kinder to myself. It looks like I've further shaken off some of the hustle mentality of the states. I find myself leaning into the Estonian style of reserved expression, and I find this agreeable. I seem to have broader understanding of the world at large, and yet am finding it easier to shrug it off in favor of the local present. I find myself more gracefully accepting the bounty that everyday life has to offer (though we'll see how it goes this winter!).