What is community?
That question has been on my mind a lot lately — it’s also the subject I’m currently exploring in my writing.
In a world that often feels fractured, both globally and close to home, I find myself returning to a simple reminder: how fortunate I am to live in a friendly, connected, and vibrant little town.
Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Spend any time online and you’ll find plenty of criticism of places like this. But it’s worth remembering that a significant proportion of online commentary is not even human — some estimates suggest around 20% of social media activity comes from bots. That alone should make us cautious about mistaking noise for reality.
When I think about community, I come back to something someone said to me recently: that community is not a thing you can measure or point to. It’s not infrastructure or statistics. It’s the way we relate to each other — the relationships between people, and between people and place. Something intangible, but deeply felt. The glue that holds things together.
They also suggested that community sits in contrast to consumerism. Where consumer culture tends to elevate individuality, convenience, and transaction, it can quietly erode the value of relationship itself. We begin to prioritise what we own and earn over how we connect and belong.
In more traditional or indigenous ways of thinking, value is often placed less on possessions and more on relationships — on the quality of connection and shared experience. That shift in perspective feels important.
You can see the difference in everyday life. Take something as ordinary as buying food. Compare a supermarket self-checkout — scanning your own items under bright lights, navigating prompts and payment systems alone, often in a rush — with buying from a market stall or independent shop. There, you’re met by a person. There’s conversation, familiarity, a moment of acknowledgement. You are part of something, even briefly.
One experience feels transactional and isolating. The other feels human.
In that sense, perhaps one of the quiet acts of resistance in a highly consumer-driven world is simply choosing differently: shopping locally where we can, participating in community life, supporting spaces where relationships still matter. Not as nostalgia, but as a conscious decision to value connection.
There’s a beautiful Dutch word — gezellig — which roughly describes a feeling of warmth, cosiness, and togetherness with people you love. That sense of belonging, of ease in each other’s company, feels like something worth protecting.
It’s also something I find myself appreciating more and more.
Clare Honeyfield is a founder, coach and writer living near Stroud
