The Most Precious Currency

I've been thinking about what makes community actually work. Not the idea of it. The real thing.

What is community but a group of people deciding to spend their most precious currency on each other?

And by that, I mean time.

Not money. Not attention, though that matters too. Time. The one thing you can never get back, never earn more of, never borrow against. Every hour you give to a rehearsal, a practice, a coffee with someone you care about... that's an hour you chose to invest in something bigger than yourself.

That's what makes it matter. Nobody has to be there. Everyone chose to be.

I feel that every time I walk into a Northumberland Players rehearsal. This is my first project with this company, and honestly, I've been overwhelmed by how quickly they've embraced me. These are people who barely knew me a few months ago, and now some of them are already dear to me. That's not something you can manufacture. It just happens when good people show up and give their time to the same thing.

That's the magic of it, really. You walk in as a stranger, and somewhere between the blocking notes and the harmonies and the laughing in the hallway, you become part of something. Not because anyone announced it. Because everyone just kept showing up, kept choosing to spend that precious currency on each other.