I cannot own Dancing Rabbit. I cannot own the land. Nor can I own the common spaces. Does that mean they are not mine? So often we conflate something being ours with owning it. But what does that mean for the things that can't be bought? Things like community.

Most of us are only used to having decision-making power over things we own; not my house, not my rules. But that’s not how things work around here. In the village, people can take responsibility for things they don’t, and will never, own. In fact, people are expected to take ownership without owning, and this pokes at our most visceral fears around security, safety, and scarcity.

This is Emeshe, by the way, and my recent transition from being a community guest to a Resident has me thinking about commitment. Though my shift from unofficial to official Rabbit has felt mostly symbolic⎼ I’ve lived at DR on and off for the last year and a half ⎼ my commitment to the community is on paper now. I cared enough to write the letter of intent, read the handbook, and go through the interview. I said, “I’m really here.”

Does that mean I can claim Dancing Rabbit as mine now? Does it belong to me and me to it? Is this my community instead of their community? In some ways it is no more mine than it was before. I still called it mine in the months before my residency. I still paid my monthly fees, my kitchen co-op bill, my parking spot. I still attended community meetings, joined committees, worked for the CSCC, and tried to benefit the common good. But perhaps now it is more mine because I have claimed it as such. I have “officially joined.”

It’s easy for people from outside DR to come to Dancing Rabbit and get enamored with its charms ⎼ the whimsical buildings, the sweet, quirky people with big dreams, the summer camp vibe complete with singing, dancing, swimming, bonfires, and community meals. It’s much harder for people to commit to staying. It's at this inflection point when the visceral fears around security, scarcity and belonging really make their presence known. This is when our enculturation into a society that doesn’t value collectivism, community, cooperation, or commitment to place begins to outweigh our optimism, idealism, and excitement. We love the idea, but we haven’t learned the skills. Can I really feel safe if I’m not working a full-time job? Can I really count on people who aren’t my nuclear family members to hold me? If I sell my car, am I losing my freedom? Is work I put in for free really worth it? Why should I follow rules that aren’t enforced by some kind of authority? We can move to a rural ecovillage, but we all carry society inside ourselves.

When we “join” we must contend with the realities of a society we cannot leave behind. We are confronted by the pervasiveness of capitalism and the money economy, even in an alternative setting. Try as we might to DIY our lives here, most of us are not in possession of the mines, labs, or manufacturing facilities necessary to make solar panels, batteries, and cisterns. We do not control the means by which our sustainable infrastructure is produced, as individuals or collectives. Thus, we can save up, buy solar panels, and feel self-sufficient, but we’re going to need to get replacement panels and batteries eventually ⎼ with money. Unfortunately, in the realms of resources like energy, water, transportation, food, and housing, we can aim towards post-capitalism, but right now we need to play the game, and the other players ⎼ the IRS, the hardware store, the social security office, the bank ⎼ aren’t interested in playing by different rules.

We also face that we don’t get to leave our pain or the pain of others behind. People in community disagree with each other. People have trauma and ego that become externalized as harm to others. People do not always have the resources to be their most compassionate selves. We are a group of individuals from many different backgrounds, raised with different values and into different belief systems. We have seen different parts of the world. We have walked different life paths. It makes perfect sense that we do not always see eye to eye; that we have disparate visions of what it means to be sustainable, what it means to be a community, what it means to have Dancing Rabbit be ours.

So then why join? Why do something that is going to challenge our fears? Why attempt to change a culture so deeply emblazoned on both our internal and external landscapes? Why do it the hard way? The scary way? The uncharted way? The weird way? The my-parents-don’t-get-what-I’m-doing way?

It’s not a choice to take lightly. And I don’t believe that it’s a choice to be made on pure hopefulness, or idealism. We can’t just believe that Dancing Rabbit will automatically heal us or save the world. We can’t believe Dancing Rabbit is a utopia. If we do this, we will be sorely disappointed. We will become another one of the residents who get excited, then disillusioned, and leave.

I can’t speak for everyone, but to me, truly committing to stay here means feeling called to this place. For the people who stay it means we sense there is something here worth committing to, and we sense it deeply. Something behind the rollercoaster of hope and fear that comes with living in an experimental landscape. Something that is true, and important, and necessary in the world.

I know I am here because it is empowering to be surrounded by people who are trying to live differently despite the challenges. Though our attempts are not perfect, and their undertaking is not always easy, they are real, not the hypothetical dreamscapes that populate the rhetoric of social change. And I am interested in the real, the lived, the tangible.

No, I cannot own Dancing Rabbit, nor the land, nor the common spaces. But I can take responsibility rather than ownership. And it is terrifying to take responsibility for something, particularly something that is amorphous and hard to define. Particularly when I am enculturated to see homes I do not own as transitory spaces which I do not have to care for. Particularly when I am used to seeing payment as my sole responsibility towards a place. But I am ready to go deeper. I’m ready to try.
 

Emeshe Amade is one of our newer residents, but she has been living at DR off and on for the last four years or so, and we already count her as one of us. She works as Correspondent for the nonprofit and at SubHub doing natural building.