Had the same conversation today with a father of young children that I’ve had a million times, and we both agreed that it’s all anyone with young kids ever talks about:

Where is the community? How do we find it? How do we build it? Is our desire for community real or did we pick up the idea somewhere?

Although I’ve had this conversation so many times, today was the first time I thought you know, maybe we will never find it. We can never find it.

Not that community can’t be made or friends can’t be found; but I think millennials with young children talk about community ad nauseam because we want to consume community. We want to be the consumer, not the builder. We want the type of community that is there for you already and you consume it, and are a recipient of it. But that kind of community is made for you by your parents and grandparents; the elders of your family tree. If you don’t have it, you aren’t going to find it.

What you can do is create community, but it will be mostly your kids and grandkids who get to consume the fruit of that work.

This is the work of our generation and it has to be done; and many of us are doing it.

But this is not going to replace the community we were meant to consume—that was supposed to sustain us—in our youth and early adulthood. The daughters and sons of the sexual revolution and broken homes and enervated communities will never have that. We can build it for others, and we can find friends and loved ones as we build.

But maybe in some very real sense, we will never find what we are looking for.