Third Places

A virtual hug is to a real hug as the theory of quantum mechanics is to feeding someone who is starving.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Wag more. Bark less.

It’s a pithy bumper sticker expression meant for our furriest best friends but really ought to speak to humans who still comprehend the meaning of empathy. And hope that empathy will one day supersede the angry, bitter barkers and their angry, bitter agenda.

I own and operate a whitewater rafting company. My writing I consider to be therapy. Although — admittedly — I consider floating a river to be therapy as well.

I was not drawn to founding a whitewater rafting company because I am a thrill seeker. Far from it.

I sought community. I wanted another place — a third place — for people, and myself, to feel at home. Or to feel valued.

This third place came into being in 1978. For the most part, it has become what I had hoped it would be. After 46 years, our community is both far flung and tightly bound. Community attachés can be found in Vietnam, Antarctica, Greenland, The Netherlands and Ecuador. Probably dozens of other places I am not even aware of. You never know when you might casually bump into a member of the community while standing at the ticket line in the Christchurch New Zealand International Airport, or grabbing an espresso at an iconic Santa Fe coffeehouse. After nearly half a century, we are approaching a third place consisting of a few from the third generation wave!

A community where you can feel comfortable coming and going continues to be a much sought after ideal in the world. A community where you can break bread with one another on occasion. A community where you have a shared history, a shared knowledge, a shared experience regardless of your personal background.

I will confess to being an admirer of intentional communities and utopias in my youth. I had a penchant for dealing with group living, though it was rarely idyllic. I lived in group houses from my sophomore year in college until I was steadily receiving promotional mailings from AARP.

Bringing people together was the mantra of those college professors who taught my Leisure Studies courses and bringing people together is what I had learned from closely observing my parents. My father founded small churches and nurtured them until the Presbyterian elders asked him to start another church somewhere else. My mother was so accepting of my friends congregating in her home that it sort of felt like an adjunct community recreation center.

Much to my younger sister, Suzi’s, chagrin, I am sure.

I’ve just returned from a week in the outdoors with 40 other people. Half of whom were there to learn about river running. The other half were there to support or teach river running. All of us were there — whether we knew or would admit it or not — for fellowship. Brother/sisterhood. Camaraderie.

Our annual renewal for why our river community exists.

Half of us were already community members there to prepare others to come into the fold. We call it Guide Training but it’s really acculturation. We are giving people an opportunity to see if this particular community suits them and, simultaneously, we are teaching them to guide and to appreciate all of the nuances of running rivers.

The world is desperately in need of such ‘tactile’ communities.

Virtual communities — hailed and huzzahed at the beginning — have lost most of their lustre. I believe it is possible to find an online home and make long-lived connections, but I also know how easy it is to be swayed by hucksters, scammers, charlatans and people with bad intent. I know how easy it’s become for people with bad intent to find one another — no matter the geographic distance and no matter how sordid their instincts may be.

Virtual communities brought us QAnon, incels (involuntary celibates), more mass shooters and January 6th. And heavens-knows-what on the dark web.

There are reasons and strengths and arguments for virtual communities (our tactile community has a secondary virtual community) but I have a hard time imagining how they could ever supplant the hugs, laughter and voices telling their stories around a campfire, or acting out their experiences by way of a skit, song or haiku.

I am no psychiatrist or psychologist but I can see the damage being done in real-time by a world of humans incapable — at the very least — of finding a balance between the actual third places and the virtual third places they stumble upon, or seek out, online. The world needs less isolation, just as it needs less polarization.

The ravages of the pandemic are behind us. It’s time to reconnect with what’s real and not rely solely on the virtual reality online. Real world connections are more work but far more authentic.

Wag more, bark less.

Purr more, tail twitch less.

Smile more, resting bitch face less.

Or — to use an expression, that’s also a cherished memory, carried down from a river trip many moons ago…

More singing! More singing!

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I ran across this video by chance the other day. It’s the story about the guy who — along with James Li — saved my life. I regret not having taken the time to look him up while I was in Tasmania. Guess it’s just another reason to return.

Also, there’s an election coming up. I spent a fair portion of my day writing a quick note and sending these postcards I ordered from —

https://shop.bluewavepostcards.org/

— to unregistered Arizona voters. Just one example of how you can get involved.

Also, I saw this on Substack notes and loved it because I was once an Honors English student and — even then — and certainly now, I had no idea the definition of most of these grammar-related words or phrases. Still, I found many of them clever and, of course, a few confounding.