Come together

by Jon Sullivan - 2025-08-09 - Jonism

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One of the luckiest things to happen to me in the last few years has been new a understanding regarding community.

During Covid and for years before I lived very much in isolation. No friends I hung out with, no concerts or events, just alone at home drinking and playing video games. Once a year I'd gather in Montana with friends and family, but that was almost all of the social life I had. And even when the plan to move to Oregon finally shifted into purging and packing, I still assumed I'd be alone here. Because that was the lifestyle that has worked for so long.

But I was crazy at the time, and at some point the crazy voices told me to start working on a robust social life. Concerts, dinner parties, game nights, lunch with friends. Just dive in and have friends, when I hadn't had much of that in 20 years. The crazy was right. Spending time with my community here has changed my life. It has enriched me in ways I never could have imagined.

I bring this up because I feel the strong loving group of friends I've made here have saved me from much of the insanity and rage driving 2025 towards oblivion. Things that threaten to consume all my attention while watching the democracy and justice and laws swept into the trash by evil men. To be alone in this dystopian collapse of decency and compassion would be too hard to handle. Sitting alone with nothing but your fear and confusion as an endless trickle of bad things gets added to the already massive pool...... Alone with the rage and sadness and fear and uncertainty? No. In isolation we lose. We are living in a time/country where good and evil are fighting a war for our future, and good is losing. We need to not be alone.

We need community. We need to gather to remember and celebrate what is right and good. We need the mental health that comes from a supporting group of friends. People who will always be there for you, as you are for them. We need a community where the price of entry is virtue rather than bigotry.

Obviously it's not that easy. You don't just manifest friends and a social life from loneliness and isolation. It's hard to find a good fit. To find a community that enriches your life without giving up too much of your self. And I suspect many - those in red states, those in small towns, those who can't or won't go out - don't have many options. I know I'm lucky. I hope my gratitude for you all shows.

The bad men will make finding loving communities harder. Despair, anger, hopelessness, poverty, disease. It's part of the agenda. AI will replace human jobs, but also our humanity, until even hugs are considered odd. All designed to divide us and strip away what's left of humanity and compassion. Don't let them. Get out. Go to protests. Normalize empathy, grace, humanity, kindness, mercy, sympathy, tenderness. Yes, shit is bad and getting worse. And anger is a healthy response to evil. But don't be consumed and isolated by it. Find good people and leave your anger at the door.

I was driving past a homeless encampment the other day. A formerly unlikely place many more of us will likely soon be. I was wondering where those folks, struggling and dirty and crazy, will get a hug. Who will hold them when the despair becomes too much? Even for them, at the bottom, shit is getting worse. When they cry, as they must, who will hold them?

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