Hesitation Waltz

In almost every Any Town America you point at, more and more of us are from somewhere other than here. Our allegiances, culture, and habits have shifted.

Where our grandparents worked for one employer for most, if not all, of their lives, we hop from position to position, not always for financial remuneration, but sometimes for benefits and/or other intangibles (work from home/a sense of ownership of the process/flextime). 

Our customs and preferences, in terms of brand loyalty from the cars we drive to the food we buy, differ greatly from our parents' and not merely because they are our parents.

As George Carlin once noted, our houses have become places to keep our stuff and, by extension, our neighborhoods and cities are containers for our storage units. A check of our shoe closets will not turn up those technicolored monstrosities available for rental at fine lanes everywhere, but for lack of a better description, Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone is not only a picture of where we are, but where we're going.

If you have children in school and attend their PTA or PTO meetings, you see the same parents at every meeting. That's also true for Neighborhood Watch, Church Social, volunteer sports coaching, etc. Sociologists speak of 80/20; that is, eighty percent of a community's volunteer efforts come from twenty percent of its population. No wonder you're tired-you're doing the work of four of your neighbors.

It's easy to get sidetracked and think of a city as its buildings and roads, but they're only part of the story. We, the people, are the reason for edifices and infrastructure, and too often we hesitate instead of stepping up to be the difference. 

No one else can do what each of us can. He who hesitates is lunch. You will miss every shot you never take. And that's been a problem for way too many years for way too many of us in my little town.
-bill kenny