A group of us returned from a trip to Kenya last week where we spent four intensive days meeting with members of a tiny rural community. We were exposed to the challenges and advantages of living in a remote village where the landscape is sublime but living off of that land can be life-threatening. I cannot describe the impact it had on me without falling victim to the platitudes we have heard time and again, so I apologize in advance.

Trying to get my head around what my role on this planet is feels like a worthwhile exercise but reconciling the way Kenyan villagers live with the way I do is complex to say the least. What I can describe is the feeling of gratitude that permeated every moment I spent there and every moment I have had since. Let me be clear, it is not so much gratitude for the life I have but rather gratitude for the chance I got to meet the people I did, to have held hands with and played games with the children there and to have been exposed to a people uncompromised by notions of ‘mine and yours’. Now, I am not so changed that I will abandon the basic infrastructure of my life. I have a mortgage to pay, a business to help run, a closet filled clothes and carefully displayed things in my home. None have been tossed away, moved nor held in any less regard because of my experience.

The lessons I learned there had less to do with stuff and more to do with people. More specifically, community. I saw two year old children walking themselves home along dirt roads and when I asked if we should intervene the answer was clear: no. In truth these children are never alone, every member of the village looks out for the other. Four year olds look after two year olds and eight year olds keep their eye on those four year olds and on…With clean water access being a luxury, villagers continue to trek to faraway river sources for dirty, infected water to do their household cleaning and use the clean water from the well only for drinking and cooking so that everyone has their share of the good stuff. Taking what is necessary, not wanted, for the greater good feels like a pretty darned good way of behaving to me.

When did we stop doing that? When did we set up this perpetual turf war where neighbours stop speaking to one another over where a backyard fence will be laid allowing an inch of grass to divide a community? Why do we perpetually search for ways of being further away from each other instead of allowing for our fundamental connectivity to reign? There are, of course, moments of grace that I experience in my own community. When it snows, whomever is out first clearing their walk will often clear the walks of their neighbours while they are at it. A small gesture, but one of unspoken solidarity that makes me feel protected and part of something greater than myself.

I suppose this is the lesson I learned:  What I do affects you. I am in this with you. And I promise that I will try do better by you. I may even shovel your walk.