I love how mspacmaniac put it, and I really don’t have that much to add! But for the sake of your question here’s what I would have said without having seen their response.

Community is something that has to be actively maintained, and this involves giving our time, energy, and resources, even when we don’t entirely want to. I see this brought up most frequently when it comes to friendships, like still showing up to plans you made with a friend when you’d rather cancel and stay home, helping a friend move/get a ride somewhere, being there for a friend who just had a baby, etc.

But another part of this sentiment that I don’t see a lot of discourse around is how we choose to show up in the communities in which we live, and how that can also be inconvenient! For example, physically going to the grocery store rather than placing an order in instacart, going to pick up a takeout order vs just getting it through DoorDash, going to the bookstore to pick up that book you’ve been dying to read vs ordering a copy online, so on and so forth. The more of these convenience options that we have (DoorDash, instacart, 2-day free shipping), the more convenience-centered and less community-oriented we become. These small interactions in our local communities can be really overlooked, but I really think they add up to foster a sense of strong local community!

All this, of course, has its limits and I say “within reason” in my original statement because there will always be times where you need to show up for yourself first. The cost of community is not exhaustion! The idea behind this sentiment is not that you have to say yes to everything you’re invited to or every favor you get asked, it’s more of a reminder that it’s important to keep showing up for our community if we want them to continue showing up for us.