As I walked around my community, attempting to find something I might have overlooked, I came to a park and realized that I had seen nearly everything in Santa Monica, but that I had missed a more crucial element to any city: the community. It was at this park that I discovered something very intriguing, that it wasn’t enough to visit a park or cafe and disregard it as empty only because there was no one there, because each location has its own community which only develops at certain times and under certain circumstances. This park happened to be desolate on a weekend afternoon and after a while I simply left expecting to find whatever it was that I was seeking somewhere else.

Hours later when I passed by the same park again I uncovered something surprising at the same park, on a late evening it was more packed and exciting than I would have ever expected from the same park which was nearly empty just a few hours ago. There where packs of basketball players, families playing soccer, and couples jogging together, with the addition of a time change an entire community had formed at the most unexpected places at the most unexpected of times. As I looked at this gathering I decided that it wasn’t enough to assume that I had seen all of Santa Monica just because I had looked at all the places it contained, but that to truly to see my city for what it was, I needed to find the communities that each place harbored within.

Maybe community isn’t something one has to find, but that one can create. This challenge helped me discover that community isn’t something you find on purpose, but is rather a serendipitous event. Community is something you find while taking the groceries the home and decide to take a different route, or stop for coffee somewhere new and even then it is up to chance for whether or not you happen to walk into that venue at just the right time. I now believe that one can easily create a community anywhere as long as you bring the right people, at the right time, to the right place.