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The Power of Presence

Over a decade ago, I gained the consciousness of “community”. Being a product of one. A community of people raised me. I was nurtured by people who showed up and stayed up. I also realised that sometimes, there were no events around their presence, but it was simply enough for me that they showed. I would later in life refer to it as the gift of presence.

For context, the presence of which I write is not the meaningless sort of presence that I have seen a lot as I have grown older. I realised that some people’s presence is a burden rather than a gift. Such people selfishly and constantly seek to be nurtured – more like “serviced”, just like a broken vehicle. That is not the type of presence in reference here. In fact, that is not “presence”. It is something else, which we shall find another time and space to name and dissect.

Working with communities made me realise at a deeper level that we can not survive in isolation. People are relational, albeit to different degrees.

There’s often the chance that we take “little” things for granted, such as the POWER of our PRESENCE; the GIFT of our TIME, and the COMFORT of our WORDS.

Take a second look at the community of women in the image above. It is an amazing community held together by the power of presence.

Communities keep you grounded and rooted. But community also requires that you show up. Trust is not built without a measure of active and intentional presence.

The joy on the faces of people when we SHOW UP… the depth of our conversations and the actual gift of vulnerability. These are seemingly simple realities that one needs to take note of more consciously.

“Little” things are not so little after all.

There are unlikely places where all we have to do is SHOW UP. When we do, the people LIGHT UP.

You never know. You just never know.

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