Safety First
My very brief career as an HOA board member has officially ended a second and final time. And of course I have managed to found more meaning out of the whole thing.
After attending my first board meeting, where the existing board of directors announced, “We quit,” and walked out after an extremely contentious meeting where hostility was being hurled from both sides, I offered to step up and help form the new board.
I didn’t have a burning desire to be a board member, but I saw a need, and I also saw the division within the community. That is where I felt the burning desire.
The thought was, maybe I can help smooth this over so that the transition between the old board and the new one becomes one of healing rather than hurt. That this could become a united community instead of a divided one.
That was my idealistic child jumping into action again.
Meanwhile, my protective robot was hovering close by saying, “This might not be a good idea. You might want to think about this…”
But by then she was already involved, offering to talk with the previous board and help determine the next steps forward. And so she communicated with the old board, and communicated with the new board, and communicated with the people in the community as well as she could.
Because of course she thinks all things can be solved with open communication, kindness, respect, and the understanding that everyone cares here. They just have different ideas about what that looks like as a board member.
In the end, she discovered that not everyone was asking the same questions.
Most people wanted change. They wanted someone and something different. Someone was wrong here and they wanted to find someone who could make things right. They wanted action, not understanding.
Or at least that is how it appeared to me.
Over time, I began to realize that people were organizing around very different concerns. But the question I couldn’t understand was:
Why does the separation itself seem so attractive?
Why does “us and them” keep reappearing when it feels like this is the root of so many of our problems?
I don’t know the answer. But it makes sense that the ego may be seeing things differently here because the ego sees itself as different. It sees itself as separate, and so it believes that safety comes from distinction, not connection.
In order to know who I am, I need to know who I am not.
That is the goal of the ego. And it’s an essential one. It’s part of survival programming. It’s not bad or wrong. It just prioritizes safety over connection, which means it thinks in terms of us and them.
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To know that my group is good, I need another group that is less good. To know that my values are correct, I need values that are incorrect.
The entire structure is built on contrast.
The problem is that it never works for very long. Because if my sense of self depends on being right, then it is fragile. It requires constant maintenance. As soon as one opponent disappears, another must be found. As soon as one conflict is resolved, another emerges. As soon as everyone agrees with me, I start looking for the next person who doesn’t.
Which is exhausting.
The ego promises relief:
“Once everyone sees what I see, I’ll finally feel at peace.”
But peace never arrives because we must continually find those who are “wrong” so that we can be “right.” The mind keeps recruiting allies, evidence, supporters, and confirmation that we are right and they are wrong.
And so it has no interest in asking, “How do we become a we?”
It is asking other questions.
Who can be trusted?
Who caused the problem?
Who can protect us from having this happen again?
So if someone is trying to determine who is trustworthy and who is not, then dissolving the boundary between “us” and “them” can feel threatening rather than liberating. Not because we are bad people, or because we enjoy conflict, but because the boundary itself feels protective. And safety will always be prioritized first.
And so this is my grand conclusion.
Maybe unity comes after safety, not before it.
And that thought brings relief because now no one is wrong for thinking in terms of “us and them.” They may simply be thinking, “Safety first.”
And I can agree with that. But of course it immediately leads to my next question.
How do we move to a place where we begin to believe that the ultimate safety might not come from strengthening the boundary between us and them, but from recognizing that there is no us and them?
There is only us.
I have no idea. But it feels like a question worth asking.
