A day in the life of community

A day in the life of community

8 min read
Published:
(a year ago)
I talk about what life is like living in an intentional community and how that compares to the typical model of living and working a 9-5 job.
“Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures.”

-Yuval Noah Harari

I like this quote a lot. Firstly, because it drives home the simple fact that the way we live our lives is less the result of careful planning and more of a byproduct of happenstance and our particular circumstances. Secondly, I like it because it makes it immediately clear that the way we live is up to us to decide.

When a friend reached out to me the other day to inquire how I was doing, this topic came up. She asked what my lifestyle is like, here living in Hawaii in an intentional community, so I offered to write a more in-depth post about it and here I am. 🙂

What is life like for me?

Well let me start with how life was like for me for most of my life. After I graduated university and went into the workforce, my life largely revolved around work. This is as it is for most of humanity today. Everything about where I lived and how my day was structured was determined by someone other than me. That's the way of our current social and economic paradigm: our jobs are the focal point of our lives. If we get a new job, we move to where it is by default (on that note, let's thank the pandemic for opening up more remote work opportunities!). The time we get up, the time we sleep, when we eat food and what that food is, so much is determined by our job. And if we want to do things other than our jobs, we have to fit them in around our work schedule. Frankly, it's appalling to me how much this is taken for granted -- the extent to which wage labor consumes our lives.

Of course, if you're among the lucky few to have a job you are passionate about, you may not feel this way. Or, if you are earning lots of money, you may feel the monetary rewards are worth the time you sacrifice. But you should be mindful of the fact that the vast majority of people engage in labor exchange because they must in order to survive (rather than doing what they do for a passion), and most people are not earning a lot of money for what they do (somewhere between 50-75% of people live paycheck to paycheck).

Despite the fact that I had an excellent job and competitive pay, I left for a number of different reasons, one of which was because I wanted to the spaciousness to live my life the way I wanted to. So I left, spent months researching different ways of living, reached out to different communities, and eventually I found myself in Hawaii at an intentional community.

How I live now

My life now is structured the way I want it to be, and because I am the driver of my schedule, I can also change it when I want to as I discover what works for me and what doesn't and as hobbies and interests come and go.

For me, I value personal growth, learning, creative expression, and you can see that in how I structure my day. Also, my day isn't organized around a strict schedule in that I have to do things for any particular length of time or at any specific time, so even though I often start it with exercise and meditation, sometimes I do things in a different order. What follows is just a sample day:


First of all, I wake up when I want to. There is no set "time" I adhere to -- I just get up when my body feels like it has had the rest it needs.

Ideally, I start my days with exercise. I used to be stronger and more "buff" in the past when I used weights and focused on strength training, but I've found there's a big difference between exercise for fitness and exercise for muscle development. What I was lacking in my exercise routine in the past was movement. You can be super strong but have zero coordination or athletic ability, which is important for overall health. Also, I make it more of a point to include stretching into my routine every day, because that's also an important part of having good overall health.

After exercise, I meditate. Meditation is one of those things that I've known about for many, many years but never really was able to make it into a habit. Why would I just sit around specifically not trying to think? Isn't that a waste of time? But the truth is that integrating meditation in your life can be profoundly beneficial for a number of reasons I don't have the space to spell out here, but in brief:

  • it allows you to be more in tune with your body, a skill humanity has long forgotten. Our bodies are highly evolved biological machines that give us a vast array of signs and signals that are extremely helpful to be aware of.
  • it allows you to learn to live more in the present, which not only increases your awareness but also your enjoyment of things.
  • it affords you the only free will humans have: the ability to react less to things (act based on your instinctual, gut responses), and instead deliberately respond to them.
  • it can massively reduce anxiety because you learn to control the flow of your thoughts. Anxiety for many is characterized by a relentless flow of fears gnawing at the back of your mind, but with meditation you learn to control your flow of thoughts to bring about instant peace, effortlessly.
  • in learning to control your thoughts you also learn to live more intentionally (in alignment with your values)
  • and so much more benefits beyond what I know (remember: I am only a novice!)

When I'm hungry, I eat. If I'm feeling like having some fresh grown food, I walk the land to find some. The orchard is chalk full with citrus, there's papaya trees everywhere, avocados, squash, mamey sapote (tastes like pumpkin pie), jabuticaba (a kind of tart grape), cherries, tomatoes, all manner of greens, root vegetables, and so much more. We do not eat 100% of our meals from the land here, but we could if we wanted to (it just takes more energy to be put towards gardening and harvesting, energy that is currently spread out over a range of different projects and interests). In this community, we each have one cook shift each week where we cook dinner for everyone, so overall much less cooking needs to be done which is great because it's not something I'm particularly passionate about (only for breakfast and lunch do we need to cook ourselves).

I work on what I want to, and it benefits the community directly. Until recently, most days I would help out on the land as a farm supporter for a few hours. This was helpful to get a sense of what kinds of activities are needed to keep things running, but as I am a trial member now, I have more capacity to direct my own efforts and see how my skills fit into the community. Right now, that means I am trying to help the community become more aligned towards their goals and more efficient at reaching them. The bottom line is that all the "work" I do every day goes directly towards my own well-being as well as the well-being of those that live here with me. And when you have a community of people all working in the interest of everyone else, the amount of work to do is spread out so life is easeful, especially compared to some of the high-stress jobs I know many of my friends had in the SF Bay Area.

I often walk the land to see what's going on. I enjoy spending time with the chickens and feeding them (some just hatched barely two weeks ago now). I enjoy taking my cats for walks, too. Sometimes I'll bump into other community members and I'll ask what they are up to and strike up a conversation. Sometimes I feel pulled to focus on my personal projects so I don't do any walking at all -- it just depends on how I feel on any given day.

If I can, everyday I try to practice piano. Music is a new thing for me. My whole life has been sports-computers-video games-science-science-science and I never really had an interest in music until recently. Here in Hawaii, there are a lot of musicians and opportunities for spontaneous jam sessions on the beach or simply after a meal and I've been feeling like it'd be fun to express myself creatively in that way.

Every day I also try to find time to learn something. Sometimes this means watching an interesting TED talk, and sometimes it means reading one of the many books in my queue. I like to keep myself learning all the time, so I am always growing and being the best I can be.

At some point in the day, I also try to find the time to do a little writing. It helps me organize my thoughts and I like the idea of having a record of what's on my mind for myself and anyone else who is interested.

I never forget to include time for play/entertainment. There's a lot of different things to do for fun but mostly I spend it watching shows with Teresa and hanging out with other members of the community.

Lastly, I go to bed when I want. Ideally I'd go to bed around 10pm so I can have an bright an early start to my day, but I'm not strict about it. Sometimes some project has my attention and I don't go to bed until 3am, and that's okay. This is my life, and the choice is mine.


If there's anything I want to emphasize from sharing what my average day looks like, it's that everything I do directly benefits me (and generally also others here in the community). More than I was ever able to in my previous life, I am able to dedicate a lot of time towards my own well-being as well as the things I'm interested in. I occasionally do things I'm not interested in for the benefit of the community, but these activities are few and far between compared to the 8-hr daily grind the average person puts in. And best of all, I still have plenty of leisure time. Living in community has turned out to be remarkably easeful and fulfilling in a lot of ways.

So, what's the catch? Why isn't everyone doing this?

Well, living with others in close proximity can be challenging -- it depends on the group of people you are with. This community I am at has been around a while so the members have developed the emotional intelligence and communication skills that help keep drama at bay.

However, most people have abysmal communication skills and even poorer emotional intelligence, which invariably leads to conflicts and struggle. This is the number one reason people are afraid to try community-living, often because they have come to believe that conflict is inevitable. However, it is certainly not inevitable. It simply requires a willingness to learn effective communication strategies, to develop emotional intelligence, and to accept feedback from others. Overall, one should ideally have a commitment to personal work because it is most often our traumas and triggers that spark conflict.

Beyond possible interpersonal challenges, it's also tricky to live in an intentional community legally in a lot of places because of zoning laws. U.S. society is structured as if the only option for existence is to live in a single family home on a single parcel of land. If multiple families want to live together on the same parcel, typically it has to be subdivided (which takes time and money) or you figure out some other loophole (e.g. ag worker exemptions).

Though this way of living can be hard to pull off, it's definitely worth exploring if you can, because ultimately you'll probably be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled living in a community.

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