On building a village: a new letter series

As we sipped our wine and wiped the paint off our fingers at last Friday's Make Bad Art event, my friend Hannah made a profound observation:

"What you're doing here, Olivia — showing us how to build community in real-time — is so important, because building community takes intentional work. It doesn't just happen."

That statement has stayed with me, not only because it meant the event was hitting its exact learning goals, but because she was getting at something deeply true: relationships, communities, and networks of belonging require effort to build. And more than effort — they require skill.

Which brought me back to a conversation I'd had a couple of weeks earlier with my friend Larry, over americanos and iced matcha at our local coffee shop…

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We were talking about the concept of building a "village."

Everyone seems to be talking about villages lately, at least on my algorithms. those deeply place-based, interdependent webs of human relationship you develop where you live. Your barista, your next-door neighbors, your kids' third-grade teacher, your closest friends: the humans who make up the scaffolding of your everyday life. Therapists like Esther Perel, facilitators like Priya Parker, everyday social media influencers — everyone is trying to pinpoint why villages are so hard to form in our modern world.

These conversations are necessary and often helpful. But there's one commonly re-posted quote I can't stop thinking about:

"Everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager."

It's a sharp observation — and I understand the critique. But I think it misdiagnoses the problem as human selfishness or laziness. What if the truer problem is that most of us genuinely don't know how to be a villager?

In a cultural infrastructure created by digital connection, convenience, and political polarization, we aren't incentivized to say hello to a stranger in public. Plus, for all of our excellent online critiques and articles and reddit forums that define the what, we aren't being given actual instructions on the how. No one is showing us the actual skills required to build a village — and that's exactly what Larry and I were wrestling with.

He's a real-estate agent, community-oriented family man, and conscious citizen who has noticed, over sixty years of life, the growing inability of many people to simply have a conversation. I'm an entrepreneur whose entire business is oriented around teaching the skills needed for connection. We're both people who care deeply about community — and yet even we find it hard.

What are the social muscles that have atrophied in our culture? The courage to say hello to a stranger. The ability to embrace the awkwardness of small talk. The discipline of asking for help, and offering it in return. These are humble ingredients for human connection, easily forgotten in a world that profits off of distraction and distrust.

Larry told me about finally introducing himself to an elderly neighbor — after two years of living on the same street — only when a beloved bass guitar was stolen. The neighbor said, "I know who you are, Larry," clearly miffed, and also, ironically, someone who could have made the introduction himself long ago. I confessed my own version of the same avoidance: the Friday nights I choose the couch over going out because socializing feels too draining, the new neighbors in my building I haven't introduced myself to because it feels too awkward.

And yet — on the flip side — my friendship with Larry, his wife Audrey, and their daughter Liz exists precisely because we were all willing, on one particular afternoon, to push past that awkwardness and say hello.

We're all regulars at the same coffee shop where Liz works as a barista. Many months ago, we happened to be sitting at the bar at the same time and got to talking. Over the course of many run-ins turned deep conversations, they've become part of my village. Last Sunday they invited me over for Easter tea — a sacred gesture for someone whose family is many states away.

What I didn't mention is that Larry and Audrey's home is something of a family compound: a couple of their kids and their spouses, Audrey's brother — multiple generations all sharing a large lot in the middle of the city. As we were drinking our pot of decaf earl grey, cats lounged in the afternoon sun while squirrels worked through the peanuts Larry and Audrey leave out on the fence posts, family drifted in and out of the kitchen. It was, in the most literal sense, a village — built that way on purpose, because they decided to create the physical infrastructure for the life they wanted.

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My friendship with them didn't happen overnight. It was built through a million small moments: hellos, check-ins, remembering details of each other's lives, attending important events, saying yes to invitations. In short: showing up. That is the real work of building a village.

I don't have all the answers — I've lived the questions and the tensions as much as anyone, especially in a transient city where community seems to shift every year. But I know what I've seen: magic forming out of nothing when someone has the courage to simply show up and try. And I know that what Hannah named at that paint-stained table is true — it takes intentional work. It doesn't just happen.

So I'm kicking off a new series: "How To Be a Villager." A few letters devoted specifically to the how of it all. Join me for the next few weeks as we explore this together.