A Strong Community Can Accommodate a Thief
The tiny off-grid community where I live has a lot in common with a fairy tale. Tucked away in the rainforest, connected by walking paths bordered with rambunctious fruit trees and flowers, you might stumble across the hand-made house where the weaver lives, cross paths with the carpenter on your way to gather water from the spring, or listen to the old fisherman tell tales of catching ono in the bay. In such an enchanting setting, it’s easy to feel that time has stopped: the ordinary rules of the world don’t apply here, and things will go on as they are forever.
In the six years I’ve called this Hawaiian valley home, I’ve become attached to the way things are: the sunset gatherings under the monkeypod tree, the evenings playing card games at my neighbor’s house, the familiar people who can almost always be found at one of a handful of familiar places. I’ve found deep comfort in the predictable rhythms of the day: the roosters crowing before sunrise, the sound of my neighbor cracking a coconut with a machete and pouring dry food into the dogs’ bowls, looking out my kitchen window to see another neighbor pushing her wheelbarrow across a big, open field, cutting through yet another neighbor’s yard to reach the place where we all park our cars.
Like an unsuspecting character in a children’s story who stumbles into a dream world, I’ve been lulled into the sense that this is just the way things are. I will always wake up to these sounds, and always see these sights. One neighbor will always be sitting on his porch doing the crossword puzzle in the daily paper while his little black and white dog comes out to bark at me; another will always be making his way down the trail with a pair of five-gallon buckets, harvesting windfall fruit to feed his pigs. In this version of reality, nobody ages, nobody argues, and nobody leaves; the roosters keep crowing and the flowers keep blooming until the end of time.
A few months ago, one of my favorite neighbors left the valley after making the painful decision to part ways with his longtime partner. Just like that, the Monday night badminton games which had been the social highlight of the week disappeared. We tried to carry on without him, but we barely had enough players to begin with, and the games just weren’t the same without his entertaining commentary and trick shots. To cement the tradition’s demise, the more elderly neighbors who used to come over simply to watch the game decided they no longer wanted to walk home after dark. With no spectators, and only two or three players, there wasn’t enough glue to hold things together. Just like that, a beloved tradition came to an end.
Well, I told myself, it wasn’t that bad. At least we still got together to play cards in the evenings once or twice a week. People were getting old; it was only a matter of time until more neighbors moved away from this extremely remote and demanding life. At least we could enjoy each other’s company for now.
But then one night, while we were playing a rollicking game of cards, two of my favorite neighbors each drank one more beer than they were accustomed to having. One of them made an ambiguous comment, the other one interpreted it in the worst possible way, and before you know it, they had escalated into a full-blown shouting match—an unprecedented event in the time I’ve known them. After gently attempting to help them de-escalate, the rest of us sat there in stunned silence as a thirty-year friendship imploded before our eyes.
Just like that, the card games which had formed the other social backbone of life in our community ceased to be, as both parties concluded that they were better off without the other’s friendship. I continued to visit both neighbors separately, but it wasn’t the same as the group dynamic we used to enjoy. When I realized that things might never go back to the way they were in what had been for me some truly golden years, I felt a quiet sense of grief. I had long accepted that the neighbors I love and depend upon would someday get old and die—I just didn’t expect that the community would die before them.
What do we do when things happen that are out of our control? How do we deal with change, especially when we experience that change as negative? As the senior editor at a self-help and spirituality publisher, I spend all day pondering these questions alongside the authors I work with—and yet, when it comes to living the answers in my own life, I struggle just as much as anyone else. I ask myself what advice the authors I’ve worked with would give, and the answers float into my head: words like acceptance, compassion, ritual, and imagination.
I tell myself that this time of seeming destruction is an essential part of my journey with this place, just as much as those precious evenings under the monkeypod tree. If we only lived through the easy moments, we would never learn wisdom. If we only saw people at their best moments, we would never learn true compassion. If we didn’t trust that things will unfold in the fullness of time, we would never receive the gift of perspective.
Years ago, when I was studying North Indian classical music, my teacher explained why a certain raga contained a bitter-sounding note. “That note is the thief,” he explained. “But this raga teaches that a strong queen can accommodate a thief in her queendom.” I’ve pondered that story ever since. A strong community can accommodate some discord; a strong heart can accommodate disappointment and grief; a strong life can flow with change. Without its bitter note, the raga would have less depth. Indeed, it is the presence of the thief which allows the monarch to practice true nobility.
While I don’t think it’s necessarily true that all negative events are blessings in disguise, it has been my experience that great upheavals often do give rise to unexpected possibilities—new chapters revealing themselves that never would have been written if the old fairy tale hadn’t fallen away. I remember other moments in my life when things felt uncertain, or when the structures and rhythms I’d depended on suddenly changed. Usually, it meant learning new skills or otherwise expanding; rarely are we called to contract in response to change.
Even when my neighbors inevitably make amends, it won’t alter the fact that our small community is dwindling, with fewer people moving to this remote area, and more and more residents growing old, dying, or moving away. As much as I exult in the life of this place—the green leaves, singing birds, and abundant fruit—it stubbornly, insistently teaches me about death. From the rotting tangerines on the forest floor, to the tumbledown shacks whose owners have gone away, to the old stone graves just steps from the walking path, this place has never pretended that nothing ends. It was only me who imagined otherwise.
To be noble in the face of change is to remain in harmony with your innermost values. What remains constant in your heart even as external circumstances change? What do you continue to do, say, and believe even when things aren’t going your way? I ask myself these questions as I gaze at the grassy spot where we used to play badminton, or sit on my neighbor’s porch in the evening, just the two of us, with the card games and dominoes gathering dust on the shelf.
In North Indian classical music, ragas are sung over the constant droning of a perfectly tuned tanpura, which provides the fundamental notes against which all other notes are measured. It is by listening to the tanpura that raga singers remain perfectly in tune, even as they travel far from the fundamental, moving from note to note at incredible speed. In this manner, the change inherent in melodic improvisation is anchored to something dependable and eternal.
In life, that dependable, eternal thing can only be love. The truth is, as much as I’ve felt challenged by the upheavals in my community, I also feel that in giving up my fantasies and projections of an idyllic world, I’m learning to love that world more deeply—indeed, to truly love it for the first time. Without stubbornness and contradictions, life would lose its poignancy. And without the knowledge that things can suddenly change, we might never learn to appreciate the fleeting nature of what we are given to experience while we are on this earth.
This spring, I hope you all find that dependable, eternal thing in your own lives—and when a bitter note appears in your raga, may you sing it with grace.
Sincerely,
Hilary T. Smith
Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing
