Our imagined communities

I looked up for what seemed like ages at the grandeur of stone and history as I stood, trivial and minute, in front of Westminster Abbey.

I spent my spring break visiting one of my oldest friends in London. One afternoon, I found myself exploring Westminster. I walked, unhurried and deliberate, through the archaic halls and elaborate chapels of Westminster Abbey. The intricate stonework, the woodwork, the history billowed out from the incredible stained glass windows and the pipes of the mammoth organ, grandiose in stature. I ventured into one of the numerous chapels through a small stone hallway to the tomb of Queen Mary I, where I heard over my manual audio tour: “Do you go to Duke?”

Dumbfounded, I glanced up from the uber-touristy brochure I was carrying and searched the near proximity for who could have possibly asked me such a question. I was wearing my team-issued Duke Field Hockey rain jacket, an obvious staple amid the horrendous London weather, and found I was soon introducing myself to one of my classmates—whom I perceived first as a complete stranger—in the middle of a 13th-century church in England. Not only did she go to Duke, but she, too, was an academic junior, living in the same building that I am currently living in.

What a small world, I thought—what were the chances? I’ve always had small world moments, moments where six degrees of separation feels but a slight strain. But something about being so far and distant, so separated from Durham, from Duke, really resonated. If I hadn’t been so blatantly donning a Duke embroidered raincoat, we’d cross paths, not knowing that we’d be returning after the duration of spring break not only to the same school, but also to the same residence hall.

The world, shrinking smaller with every handshake and every slight, fleeting conversation, seems to allow these moments more frequently. Matters of proximity overlap in boundless proportion with measures of coincidence, and matters of coincidence feel like a strange, half-hearted déjà vu in exponential ways.

Benedict Anderson’s discussion of “Imagined Communities” is one I’ve read countless times for anthropology courses, but my brief stay in London made this lofty and perhaps convoluted theory finally make sense. The nation “is an imagined political community,” writes Anderson, “imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” It was undoubtedly evident that as Americans abroad, it’s incredibly easy to buy into our citizenship as a member of this imagined community, whether conscious or not. It’s comfortable, automatic and natural to very clearly overhear an American, to bump into one at a restaurant or on a train or in a church chapel, and feel a certain and irrefutable connectedness.

It’s near impossible to ignore the connection to what we know, to what is familiar. For me, trips abroad are few and far between, but the same occurrence is irrefutable each time. Perhaps you feel more American when you flip through a dog-eared issue of SkyMall, browsing the uber-excessive exhibition of consumatopia within its pages. Maybe you feel a little more at home when you see the plaid-shirted, jean-clad man walking through the terminal in London Heathrow Airport with an up-tilted Pittsburgh Pirates hat. You unconsciously, maybe unabashedly, let these people into your imagined community. You meet four older women from Wyoming on a train from Windsor Castle outside London to Paddington Station. They show you their souvenirs. You show them which bus route to take back to their hotel. They are now in your imagined community.

These mentally drawn communities feel tangible and real. They are interesting and enticing, as are the individuals we welcome into our mentally composed amalgamations of societal culture. In a crowded room, on a packed train—we don’t feel this connection when we’re comfortable in our surroundings. It’s when we’re displaced or distant that we learn what a small world we live in. It’s when we’re least expecting it that we find ourselves somehow connected to what a few seconds ago was a stranger. These moments of connectedness, slight and short, are what remind us of the omnipresence of our own imagined communities.