Let’s try it again, shall we?
You’re at a party.
Everyone is having a simply marvelous time. Dancing, talking, nibbling, chatting, laughing, being everso amusing and amused, simply loving each other and themselves.
You, on the other hand, are feeling out of it. They’re all so noisy, so self-involved, so insensitive to, well, you. You are not yourself. And the longer you stay, the less yourself you seem to be.
If I were you, this would be ME:
Then, sometime later, there’s this other party. You’ve napped, composed one of your best poems, had a remarkably full-emptying bathroom experience, bathed, eaten a light but filling meal, and dressed, if you must say so yourself, impeccably. In sum, you are remarkably together. You open the door, and people are just milling around, not really talking to each other. Some are carrying around plates of food, not eating. Others are standing by the bar, drinking, seriously. There’s no music. No games. Nothing remotely fun or engaging.
You (for a very brief moment, before you plummet into the abyss):
When all along what you were really hoping, as was everyone else, was that you’d all feel like this:
Confluence is a connection (one of many) between a community and another entity: another community, or, in this case, you. When you and the community are in confluence, you are in flow together.
There are many different arts and organizations that are devoted to making confluence more available to us. For example, there’s the theater where we find rows of theater-style seats facing a theater-style stage surrounded by a theater-style proscenium arch and hidden by a theater-style curtain. By creating a physical separation – an actual boundary between the community (actors, director, technicians, etc.) and individuals outside the community (audience) – by appointing other individuals (the director, conductor, announcer) to act as liaisons between the community of performers and the community of spectators, by establishing clear conventions to guide the conduct of the audience, physically reinforcing the distinctions; we make it possible for the performers to reach for confluence, and the audience to share in the performers’ and each other’s.
Rules and conventions that maintain a distinction between audience and performers make it possible for people to experience confluence while at varying degrees of personal involvement. The demands on the performer are far more complex than those on the audience member, but so are the expectations. Moments of confluence between the audience and performer are equally powerful for both audience and performer. From time to miraculous time, the performers are in their moment of confluence, the audience is in its moment, and both audience and performers in confluence with each other.
Then there’s the sports arena with its clear and inviolable divisions between spectator and players. Official referees and announcers, official marching bands playing the officially national anthems, halftime performances, special lighting – all making it possible for the spectators not only to spectate, but to participate in, and even to influence the experience shared between the players, between the spectators, and between the spectators and the players.
In less formal situations, like parties, we use food, games, music, dance, dress, we create distinct areas dedicated to particular activities, we rely on the hosts and the friendship between participants – all to establish and maintain a more general, varied, and accessible experience of confluence.
Party games are particularly effective at inviting confluence because their rules and structures are easily distinguishable from less structured experiences. They invite people to act as players (narrowing their range of behaviors to a rule- and role-bound relationship). They provide a specific goal. They create a distinction between players and audience or observers. And they have a special meaning, divorced from other purposes or interpretations, that allows players to act playfully in ways that are unique to games.
Like the audience at a performance, non-players can both participate in and influence the experience of those who are involved, but only to a minimal degree. Non-players are free to observe, encourage players, or to wander off and join other activities where they might participate in or create a more confluential (for them) community.
Dancing, on the other hand, seems to lend itself to less structured, shifting moments of confluence between different partners, while remaining open enough to embrace a partyful of people in a moment of deeply shared spontaneity.
And it’s not all fun and games. Confluence plays a central role in the effectiveness of the military, and is supported by the wearing of uniforms, the hours of marching and months of shared, strenuous exercise. Protest movements are similarly nourished by moments of confluence, and similarly structured so that these moments are likely to arise (living together, marching together, carrying signs, braving the authorities together). In the courtroom, jurors are assigned their own area and confined to a special set of rules. In like manner the judge, lawyers, witnesses, the courtroom observers and even the accused and accuser all have roles and rituals which help establish a sustainably focused, confluential community.
Casinos, coffee shops, courtyards, clubhouses, and cruise ships; restaurants and night clubs; hotels, resorts, arcades, classrooms, playgrounds, cafeterias, assembly halls, recreation centers, retreat centers, kitchens, parks, family rooms, conference rooms, movie theaters, child care centers, fitness centers, museums, hotel lobbies, libraries, shopping centers, public squares, food courts, hospitals and fire stations; our culture rests on institutions that foster confluence.
Confluence plays an equally central role in family and marital relationships, and is also supported by very clearly defined rituals and occasions. Celebrations, outings, eating together, playing and working together, even lying around in front of the TV together; all make the experiences of confluence more accessible to those participating in the relationship.
Confluence plays a similarly central role in animal life. Ants and bees, herd animals and monkeys, fish and birds are all drawn together by the transcendant joy of confluence, even when they’re only flocking around.
Then there’s education, politics and religion: the rituals, officials, costumes, ceremonies, edifices… Don’t get me started.
The experience of confluence is the glue that binds us to a social setting, the promised reward that keeps us seeking each other out. Being involved in something together, feeling something together, experiencing togetherness, we feel safer, stronger, we transcend the limits of self.
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Awesome examples!
It’s funny how one can be “in the flow” and not even know it. Truth be told, not knowing it is probably the best way to know you’re in it.
That probably made no sens at all, but there’s a bit of advise I received once upon a time that explains where it comes from.
I grew up on a farm, with beef cattle. Several times a year we would bring them in from pasture and “sort” them out. As a family, we got quite good at it, and we each had our roles to play. Dad, of course was the “director”. He had a little notebook full of tag numbers and names that he would then look for in the coral. When he found the one he was looking for, he would touch the string on the end of his whip (don’t start. Cows can each outweigh humans by 10:1, a well-used whip is an important tool to keep a corral safe). Then he and Mom (his assistant director) would bring the cow up the side of the corral, with Dad continuing to tell us which one he needed. My brother had the incredibly important job of “gate person”. Mom and Dad would try very hard to get the cow they wanted to the outside edge of the fence, so that when they went to the gate, the others would go by, and my brother would open the gate in at just the right moment so that one cow would see it and go through.
My job was middle person. I’m the youngest in my family, and my job started out as simply the safest place in the corral to stand. Essentially, I stood in the middle of the corral beside the round bale feeder on the gateside. I would watch the whole process, and I would watch the other cows go past the closed gate, and at just the right moment, I would take one large step towards the gate to block the one cow from going past. Our cows were well-trained and knew the set-up well, so they almost never tried to go past the open gate, and I often felt useless. I mentioned it to Dad one morning that he didn’t really need me (and I’d rather be in the warm house than out in the corral), and that I was just standing there. Here was what he said:
“If you feel like you’re not doing anything, then you must be standing in the right place.”
Every member of the community lends to the flow. When it seems like you don’t need to be there is exactly when you’ve struck that balance to exactly where you need to be. That’s exactly when the flow “works”
Love and laughter,
Lily