A year ago I left Seat­tle to live in an in­ten­tional com­mu­nity on an is­land in the Pa­cific. I’ve had room­mates for most of my adult life, but this was the real deal: over a hun­dred peo­ple liv­ing to­gether, an hour away from the near­est real city, sur­rounded by jun­gle and ocean with in­ter­net speed that could only be de­scribed as ex­cru­ci­at­ing. We had each other, though, and our com­mon val­ues. 

The Fel­low­ship for In­ten­tional Com­mu­ni­ties de­fines “in­ten­tional com­mu­nity” as ecov­il­lages, co­hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties, res­i­den­tial land trusts, com­munes, stu­dent co­op­er­a­tives, urban hous­ing co­op­er­a­tives, in­ten­tional liv­ing, al­ter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ties, co­op­er­a­tive liv­ing, and other spaces en­abling peo­ple to col­lab­o­rate with a shared vi­sion.

To those of us who flock to the un­usual world of com­mu­nal liv­ing, it ful­fills a long-awaited dream of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some­thing we have only known in fleet­ing mo­ments. We know the feel­ing of liv­ing life fully, though we’ve usu­ally felt it just a week at a time while tak­ing a break from the rat race: one-week va­ca­tion, one-week Burn­ing Man, one-week yoga re­treat, one-week med­i­ta­tion re­treat, one-week dance or music fes­ti­val. For many of us, we’ve saved our most ex­pres­sive, truest, freest selves for “that one week of the year.” So it’s un­der­stand­able that we want a way to “get away” for real -- to spend an ex­tended time away, fully im­mers­ing our­selves in those rare ex­pe­ri­ences.

I know this be­cause, in this com­mu­nity, one of my priv­i­leges and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties was to in­ter­view peo­ple who ap­plied to join it. In the ma­jor­ity of these con­ver­sa­tions, I re­peat­edly heard peo­ple say that they wanted to be sur­rounded by oth­ers who shared their be­liefs and val­ues and who enjoy the same ac­tiv­i­ties they do. Due to its re­mote lo­ca­tion and ex­pressed pur­pose, it was a highly self-se­lect­ing group. Most peo­ple don’t just trip on the side­walk and fall into the woods, sud­denly liv­ing with a bunch of yoga-pos­ing, om-chant­ing, quinoa-eat­ing, na­ture-lov­ing hip­pies. These things don’t hap­pen by ac­ci­dent.

Some­times ap­pli­cants would say that they hoped to feel like part of a tribe. Their yearn­ing was pal­pa­ble, and is per­haps, uni­ver­sal. The com­mu­nity rep­re­sents an ideal: being a part of some­thing that sup­ports one’s high­est vi­sion for them­selves and the world. In its in­ten­tion­al­ity, it is a space and ex­pe­ri­ence that re­in­forces the in­di­vid­ual’s be­liefs of its mem­bers, usu­ally with­out fail. And there is noth­ing wrong with that. Noth­ing. It is un­der­stand­able, rea­son­able, de­sir­able. But for me, after nine months of liv­ing in­side my echo cham­ber, some­thing sur­pris­ing hap­pened.

With­out re­al­iz­ing that “echo cham­ber” is the for­mal term for what I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, I ob­served that in­deed, I was liv­ing within a Twi­light Zone that echoed the ma­jor­ity of the com­mu­nity mem­bers’ view­points back to them, and back to me, over and over and over again.

The re­al­iza­tion snuck up on me slowly, with a se­ries of small, un­com­fort­able notic­ings.

I no­ticed I was hav­ing the same type of con­ver­sa­tion re­peat­edly.

I no­ticed oth­ers were hav­ing the same type of con­ver­sa­tion re­peat­edly.

I no­ticed the com­mu­nity was be­com­ing more and more ho­moge­nous: phys­i­cally, men­tally, spir­i­tu­ally, po­lit­i­cally, fi­nan­cially, aes­thet­i­cally, so­cially.

I no­ticed many in the com­mu­nity like the same things, do the same things, want the same things, and com­plain about the same things.

It would be beau­ti­ful if it wasn’t kinda spooky.

These notic­ings were not unique to me. Com­mu­nity mem­bers com­monly re­ferred to our life there as being “in­side the bub­ble.” For a lot of peo­ple, in­side the bub­ble is the best place to be, and they never want to leave. But for me, not so much.

No mat­ter how much you like what’s being said, no mat­ter how much you love the peo­ple say­ing it, one thing will hap­pen with too much rep­e­ti­tion: just like lis­ten­ing to your fa­vorite song so many times that you can’t stand it any­more, your feel­ings about it will change. Sim­i­larly, when every­thing hap­pens ac­cord­ing to the same weekly sched­ule, ac­cord­ing to pre­arranged agree­ments, ac­cord­ing to re­cur­ring menus and strict meal­times, and ac­cord­ing to sup­ported as­sump­tions, life starts to feel less, well, life­like. It’s like eat­ing noth­ing but co­conut ice cream every day; it’s sweet and de­li­cious, but it doesn’t pro­vide all the vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als the body needs to sur­vive. At a time when the in­ter­net makes the di­ver­sity and depth of world and its peo­ples more ac­ces­si­ble than ever be­fore, I found it lux­u­ri­ously lim­it­ing to live in a bub­ble with such ho­mo­gene­ity of mind­set, opin­ion, ac­tiv­ity, po­lit­i­cal be­lief and styl­is­tic lean­ing.

Once I re­al­ized what was hap­pen­ing around me, “dif­fer­ence” in any form be­came end­lessly ap­peal­ing, just for va­ri­ety’s sake. I began to crave di­ver­sity and dif­fer­ence in al­most every pos­si­ble way. I wanted to rebel, just for the sake of buck­ing all this beau­ti­fully man­i­fested con­for­mity. I wanted choice. For ex­am­ple, the kitchen crew (of which I was not a part) de­cided every meal and meal­time for al­most a year, so I never got to choose what I ate. In my re­bel­lion, I started skip­ping meals, or just eat­ing an apple with peanut but­ter or a bag of chips in my room in­stead of going to the com­mu­nal meal. These weren’t eas­ier or health­ier choices, but doing it gave me op­tions and va­ri­ety, and some sem­blance of in­de­pen­dence -- things I was crav­ing, need­ing, want­ing.

The ma­jor­ity of my time in an in­ten­tional com­mu­nity was beau­ti­ful and pos­i­tive in so many ways. But it was also kind of like liv­ing in a man­i­cured gar­den or mono­cul­ture, when what I re­ally craved was the Ama­zon rain­for­est. I set my sights on mov­ing back to the con­crete jun­gle, de­part­ing from my echo cham­ber just ten days ago. I never in­tended to leave so soon; I ex­pected to stay sev­eral more months, but a sud­den offer in the big city beck­oned to me and I jumped at it. I was ready.

I know that com­ing “back to so­ci­ety,” will mean being an­noyed, pissed off, per­plexed and ir­ri­tated by the opin­ions and be­hav­iors of peo­ple with whom I don’t see eye-to-eye. But I also know that it holds the juicy pos­si­bil­ity of being sur­prised, prob­a­bly even pleas­antly sur­prised by un­sched­uled, un­ex­pected things I can’t see com­ing. Being met with pos­i­tive sur­prises is one of the things that gives my life mean­ing and a real sense of magic. And I missed it. Life was safe and lovely in the bub­ble, but it’s far too pre­dictable. Echo cham­bers give a re­mark­ably com­fort­able sense of safety, but I found that safety blan­ket to also be a bit numb­ing. I’ve learned that I’d rather feast on life as an un­pre­dictable smor­gas­bord than all-you-can-eat co­conut ice cream.

I learned a lot about my­self, oth­ers, com­mu­nity and com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the ex­pe­ri­ence. I made some in­cred­i­ble friends that I’ll have for a life­time, and I learned a ton about how I want to live my life in the fu­ture. I ap­pre­ci­ate the ac­cep­tance and en­cour­age­ment that I re­ceived from being a part of such a val­i­dat­ing, gen­er­ous, beau­ti­ful, sup­port­ive, en­cour­ag­ing in­ten­tional com­mu­nity. It’s easy to live when you’re sur­rounded by peo­ple who re­flect your high­est ideals, be­hav­iors and val­ues back to you. I needed those things, but I also need more than that.

In order to fully feel like I am grow­ing and de­vel­op­ing as a per­son, I re­ally need to be ex­posed to new and dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing and being. I’m the kind of per­son who grows the most when pushed and chal­lenged. Cru­cibles aren’t pleas­ant, but they’re ef­fec­tive. I want to learn and trans­form through my ex­po­sure to things that I don’t fully un­der­stand and can’t pre­dict. I want peo­ple to say un­ex­pected things that puz­zle and de­light me. I’m ad­dicted to learn­ing, and that hap­pens best for me in en­vi­ron­ments where I hear and see things that I know lit­tle-to-noth­ing about. I also want more di­ver­sity. For most of the last year, I was the only black per­son I saw; I tired of feel­ing like the only one push­ing for more di­ver­sity in our com­mu­nity. We hu­mans have 250,000 years of evo­lu­tion­ary di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion under our belts, and I want to ex­pe­ri­ence more of it, in every way. I wel­come the chal­lenge of an in­tel­li­gent de­bate with some­one who dis­agrees with me; both of our synapses get a work­out by going through men­tal spar­ring. It’s fun.

Adapt­ing to, ne­go­ti­at­ing, and in­te­grat­ing dif­fer­ence gives a rich­ness to life and human con­nec­tions. It deep­ens per­spec­tive and de­liv­ers sub­tlety, spon­tane­ity, choice and con­trast. My echo cham­ber gave me friend­ship, palm trees, and co­conut ice cream, but it didn’t make my life feel more life­like. Only dif­fer­ences can give me that.