At Germantown Commons, a cohousing community in Nashville, Tennessee, our mission statement is bold: “Our whole is greater than the sum of our parts. We actively embrace community, plan for sustainability, value diversity, and nurture creativity in a welcoming urban environment… Although we know we cannot change the world, we can shape part of it, creating a healthy sense of community.”
These days, everyone witnesses the suffering of people around us. Some experience depression, anxiety, and isolation, along with the current, critical divisions between people as if we are family clans like the Hatfields and McCoys, feuding over everything.
In the era of Trump’s administration, people are often led by fear of the “other,” fear of financial collapse or nuclear proliferation, so many fears. Being lonely and fearful are experiences that cohousing communities address directly.
Cohousing communities can look like people living together in extended families or small towns, but in our mobile society, so often, children move away to jobs and live far away from their families of origin. Many have given up the goodness of living in community.
Cohousing communities have developed over many years and Germantown Commons is the first cohousing community in Tennessee, now 3 years old. All ages of people and families flock to this type of living hoping to create a better way to experience life.
The benefits include enjoying ourselves while developing deep friendships and having people closely available if one is sick or isolated. At Germantown Commons we privately own our condos and we share a large Common House where we gather often for meals, trainings, meditation, business meetings, and fun activities. Each condo has its own kitchen and laundry area as well as privacy which we also enjoy.
We benefit also from sharing our lives with all sorts of people, those we may have never known without this community.
We work together to enhance the physical, financial and emotional parts of our lives, making many of our decisions by committees and consensus. We reap pleasure from downsizing so that we don’t have to own every piece of kitchen or lawn equipment that we may need.
Disadvantages? Certainly, there are some. Like living closely together with people whose lifestyles are different from our own, some who may hold strong beliefs different from ours, or behaviors that may irritate us. Cohousing is like a microcosm of our world and we work together closely, trying to help each other improve our lives and deal with any conflicts that arise, hoping to generate compassion for differentness and learn from each other along the way.
Like in our nation, living in cohousing is not for those who only want to relax and take it easy in life, circling the wagons, keeping to themselves. Our participation in community takes some time, energy, and caring intentions, as we build a better world around us, by working with what we have - which is each other.
