“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”
– Margaret J. Wheatley
Settling Down
For over a decade I have been a bit of a transient. At the end of my first major life chapter I was a divorced Dad sleeping on couches and traveling down to Maryland (or vice-versa depending on the day/month/year). When I wrote Reflections on Being Single I had just moved into an apartment in Bradley Beach, NJ. I slept on a floor mattress in Elkton, Maryland, and kept clothes in my car. Suddenly I went from seeing my then 5 year old daughter every day, to seeing her three nights a week and every other weekend. 12 years later I find myself married again, my daughter is now driving, and soon I will be changing diapers for a second time. Life has been good, exciting, and fulfilling. Yet living a life of moving every few years (I lost count over 10) the one thing I have missed is a community to call my own. Not just a place to live, but a place to settle down and grow roots. A place where you clean up a park together (as I type this it is Earth Day and I am headed to do just that), join a local theater company, know a local shop owner by name and care about their futures, and work to make yourself and your town a little bit better than it was the day before.
Continue reading “From a Town to a Community”