When communities or teams face an external crisis, it is natural to mobilise all available energy to confront it. Whether it is a top-down government infrastructure mandate, a sudden corporate restructure or an existential threat to local services, the external problem demands our full attention. But if we focus entirely on the battle outside, we risk losing the very thing we are fighting to protect.

The Irish poet Seamus Heaney once observed that two buckets were easier carried than one. This simple image of balance contains a profound truth for community survival. True resilience requires us to carry a second bucket alongside the heavy work of external problem-solving: the bucket of internal care, celebration and relationship building.

The tyranny of the single bucket

Every community and workplace has moments when a single, noisy crisis drains all the conversational air out of the room. When an issue becomes this dominant, it creates a form of tyranny over our collective attention. The temptation in these moments is to turn the community into a permanent campaign committee, where every meeting is a strategy session and every interaction is defined by what people are fighting against.

This single-bucket approach is deeply exhausting. When a group is defined solely by its opposition to an external threat, its internal culture begins to wither. Conversations become purely transactional, anxiety levels rise and the joy of simple connection is pushed aside as a luxury we cannot afford. We stop checking in on how people are doing and focus only on what needs to be done to defeat the threat, inadvertently mimicking the cold efficiency of the very institutions we are resisting.

The town of Montrose and the external trap

We can see the danger of this trap in the history of community actions worldwide. In the town of Montrose, Australia, residents found themselves facing a top-down external infrastructure mandate that threatened to disrupt their local environment and way of life. The natural reflex was to fight the mandate with everything they had, dedicating every public gathering to resistance.

The trap of the external focus, however, is that it allows outsiders to dictate the agenda of the neighbourhood. If we only react to what institutions do to us, we are still letting them dominate our collective life. The residents of Montrose realised that if they spent all their time on the campaign trail, they would eventually run out of emotional fuel. They needed a way to sustain their fight without destroying their community spirit in the process.

Restoring the internal culture of care

To avoid burnout, the people of Montrose made a conscious choice to balance their carry. They held space to challenge the external issue, but they simultaneously refused to stop replenishing their internal culture of care. They continued to host local gatherings, share meals, celebrate small milestones and map the gifts of their neighbours.

This second bucket is filled with the water of local culture. It is the active practice of checking on the vulnerable, listening to stories and creating spaces for laughter and celebration that have absolutely nothing to do with the crisis at hand. This internal care ensures that the community remains a place of safety and restoration rather than a perpetual battleground. It reminds everyone of exactly why the neighbourhood or the team is worth fighting for in the first place.

Citizenship as a balanced carry

For the active citizen or team leader, the ultimate challenge is to avoid becoming a mono-focused campaigner. It is easy to point out the crisis, but it takes deliberate, mature intent to protect the quiet spaces where people simply care for one another.

When we carry both buckets, we walk with balance and stability. We ensure that our teams and neighbourhoods are not just survival units reacting to the latest institutional directive, but thriving ecosystems capable of generating their own joy and mutual support. We fight the external battles when we must, but we never stop watering the garden at home.

Questions for reflection

What is the dominant, noisy crisis in your team or community that is currently draining all the conversational air out of the room?

How can you carry a “second bucket” this week, ensuring that local care and celebration are not entirely abandoned while fighting external problems?

Think of a past crisis where your group lost its balance. What was the organisational or human cost of dropping the bucket of internal care?

What is one small, joyful activity you can introduce into your network this week to purposefully replenish your internal culture?

Inspired by: Russell, C. and McKnight, J. (2022) The connected community: discovering the health, wealth, and power of neighborhoods. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.