Forget Xanax: Host a Potluck
How I transformed my anxiety into community connection.
I worry a lot. About climate change and what kind of future our children are facing. I worry about living in Los Angeles, a city unsustainable by its very size and car-dependent nature, situated in a state suffering drought and wildfires. My daughter has a chronic illness that is exacerbated by smoke and smog. Shortly after I moved here, when the Northridge earthquake rattled the windows and crashed our dish and glassware to the floor, my body went on alert. Any time I drive under a highway or bridge, I think: is this the big one?
Going to emergency preparedness meetings helps me feel more informed, but can also be anxiety producing. Only one fire engine for every 12 thousand homes? Really?
Well, for all you worriers out there, I have found an unexpected solution: The potluck.
To address my climate and safety concerns, more than a decade ago a few friends and I started a neighborhood group with big goals towards greater sustainability. Inspired by the Transition Town movement, we planned projects to foster local food security, less fossil fuel dependency and stronger community cohesion. We pulled up grass lawns, and planted urban food gardens and drought tolerant landscaping. We egged each other on to forgo our cars and use bikes, public transportation or walk instead.
We educated ourselves and our neighbors by showing documentaries and hosting community discussion about the issues. Many eco-themed docs however are ninety percent doom and gloom and only get to the positive solutions at the end, so again, not conducive to assuage anxiety.
We were hoping to beget larger systemic changes in Los Angeles, but such grandiose goals did not come to pass. Instead something unexpected occurred. We became friends. We realized that in a city like Los Angeles the most radical thing you can do is get out of your car and talk to each other. We could Introduce ourselves to the neighbors we had lived near for years without getting to know their names.
Once a month we held a potluck. It was easy: gather together for dinner, bring a dish or drinks to share. We offered simple food, mostly home-made, mostly but not exclusively vegetarian. Wine or beer helped create a relaxed vibe. Sometimes we were crowded together on an apartment complex patio or in a living room, other times in a spacious garden dripping with bougainvillea and citrus trees. I loved learning that the word “companion” literally means “with bread”. Sharing tastes nourished not just our bodies but friendship and generosity.
You don’t like to cook? You don’t have to! You be the one who brings the wine, or some fruit. I happen to find cooking pleasurable and calming, so that was an added benefit. But everything is welcome at the potluck. Except styrofoam.
Sometimes we would take a moment to be grateful, and sometimes we forgot. But always we would start with a check in, going around to introduce ourselves, and welcoming new folks. Sharing what’s on your mind is possible in a group between 10 and 20 people. We used a conversation prompt, a question for discussion, as a way to get to know each other better: What do you hope for? What has inspired you lately? How do you cultivate your emotional resilience when you read the latest bad news? Sharing our fears, concerns, joys and insights brought depth, lots of laughter, and connection.
For a successful potluck, all you need is to invite some people. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it does not have to be expensive. While the word pot-luck appears in the 16th century English work of Thomas Nashe, to mean “food provided for an unexpected guest, the luck of the pot,” the modern concept of a communal meal, where guests bring their own food, most likely originated in the 1930s during the Depression.
Some potluck dinners are themed — featuring a particular country’s cuisine say, or our grandparents’ comfort foods. Some hosts keep a list and assign different food groups so you don’t end up with 10 potato or rice dishes and no dessert. We were not that organized but somehow it always worked out that there was variety and spice in our meal, although we did one summer evening have all salads. We always appreciated when people brought food they had grown themselves, though not so much the occasional bug that appeared in the lettuce.
After a few years, we started to go around the table a second time, inviting support with projects or personal needs. People always stayed after to help with dishes and clean up, but when I hosted, I asked people to bring chairs and help set up beforehand, which with others present only took a few minutes. Recently I asked for coaching with computer skills from our much more tech savvy younger members. Potluck participants have asked and received help looking for places to live, looking for work, finding good information about health care, and other kinds of providers and tasks.
For many of us making such a request felt uncomfortable or foreign, like working an unused muscle and I could see how much it went against the grain of our individualistic, rely on yourself only culture.
At some point the magic happened: I looked around the table and realized we have become people we can rely on in an emergency. Yes, while I still worry about all the things I worried about before, I feel more secure. I have redefined security inside myself. It’s not about police protection although that can be important, not about trusting that the large systems we rely on, won’t fail us sooner or later, or in an emergency. It’s about knowing that I can count on not just my immediate small family, but my neighbors and friends.
This makes me less anxious about the things I have no control over and I can’t help but think how much safer we would feel if city blocks everywhere got together in this way.
When the lockdown hit, we held the potlucks on zoom. Not as good as in person, but still we enjoyed being together virtually, because yes, we missed each other. Luckily living in Los Angeles, some of us had large enough gardens we could continue to meet in person sometimes, using masks and sitting apart as needed. During the pandemic as well, I became much more appreciative of the good things this huge unsustainable city does have to offer: good weather most of the year, lots of space, and nature. Fresh food all year round from local farms, orchards and farmer’s markets, from our own gardens.
Last month, getting together outside and in person again, to get away from all the COVID talk, we decided on this conversation prompt: what song has inspired you in your life? We played each selection on Spotify, and ended up with a wonderfully varied playlist. Music and food: the two major pleasures we can share to create connection and, as I’ve learned, connection is the antidote to fear.
#community #anxiety #lifelessons #sustainability #potluck
