Community?

Community Psychology (as I understood it, because the reading I found to be needlessly complex): Understanding what your needs and goals are, locating a group with a sense of security and boundaries in which you can comfortably invest in, having the push and pull to influence a community to achieve common goals, feeling an active and proactive sense of conformity through common experiences and uniformity through symbols, sharing in the benefits of productivity and common values, and the bond formed when a community shares many high quality and successful experiences.

I have a hard time pinpointing a specific community in which I find myself belonging to. If I had to pick one I would have to say it would be the school community. This may be due to not only the quality of common goal and interactions but to the frequency. I believe that when the quantity outweighs the quality the other factors of community take over for me. If I feel that the boundaries and goals actually align with my own then I will feel comfortable and secure. Since, for various reasons, this is not often the case, I often will rely on finding the right balance of influence in order to realign myself to the community, or viceversa. I find that without shared emotional connection the quality of interaction goes way down, at least personally. I suppose that would align myself more with the first formula mentioned in the reading. What you're bringing to the group in terms of fulfillment of needs is an important one for me. When belonging to a certain group making sure that I'm fulfilling the needs/accomplishments/values is important to me. It fullfils a personal need as well as a need of the community. The less of this I do the more I begin to feel self excommunicated from a group. Of course I've also been called a pushover/tool for this very reason so there are negative consequences.