In 2022, I traveled around Europe with a team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists who study Palaeolithic people - people who lived tens of thousands of years ago.
It fundamentally changed my perspective and the context in which I view people and our behaviors today - particularly around when people have the impression that the way we do things today is just the way it’s always been, because it isn’t.
The work of life and being with other people weren't two separate buckets of time. Today, for a lot of us, they are, but out of 200,000 to 300,000 years it’s only been this way for 2-3 generations. 0.029% of modern humans' existence. But I can see why people think it’s always been this way because this is the only way we’ve personally seen.
For most of humanity, the work associated with sustaining human life was something people did with other people. You had to find food. Prepare food. Make things. Care for children. Set up shelter.
Doing that work was also where human life happened. People gathered food together. Prepared it together. Made things alongside one another. Shared knowledge. Shared resources. Children grew up surrounded by everyone.
Think about how much of the work of life happens alone now. I clean out my garage. You clean out your garage. I run my errands. You run your errands. I figure out some new piece of technology by myself. You figure it out by yourself. And after we've each finished doing all of that - and after we've done our paid work - we say, "We should get together sometime."
But now getting together is another thing we have to find time to do. So, we keep waiting until we have enough time to have community. And a lot of us don't, so yes it makes sense that so many people are lonely and struggling to find connection and meaning. Even if you have time, a lot of the people you want to see don’t.
What I'm interested in isn't going backward. I don’t want to give up modern medicine, indoor plumbing, or rights. But maybe the first people got this right: What if the work of life could sometimes be the thing that brings us together?
You have laundry? Bring it over. You do laundry and we clean my house. Next week I do laundry at your place and we clean your house. You come help me move something heavy. I help you figure out your phone. I drive you to the airport. You help me get the credenza I want from Marketplace but wouldn’t be able to get alone.
Next time you have something to do, ask whether you could do it with someone instead of alone and tell them about this and that you want to do life together. The work still gets done, but something else happens at the same time. We know each other better. We stop needing extra time just to belong.
Maybe we don't need to figure out how to add community to our already overfilled lives. Maybe we can start putting community back into the lives we're already living.
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