One, two, three….drink! Barely a whisper yet I could read the words on the lips of the three employees. Employee uniforms including hats, youngest barely out of school, oldest closing in on retirement. Clearly they had done this before: grab a can of your-favorite-highly caffeinated jolt-juice, meet at the employee break table in the deli/dining area and start the challenge, together.
Two=bys and three-bys littered the sidewalks and roadways on my ride around and through town. Same as I made my way onto various urban/semi-urban trails. It was a holiday weekend after all and early morning at that. Each coupling or grouping sharing a moment as they strode or rode through the semi-dense air, no destination in mind yet moving in lockstep as if in pursuit of an unspoken prize.
A loop around the lake nearing the dinner hour revealed more of the same. Every picnic table occupied, kids playing in groups, families or couples attentive to each other within the larger, cumulative group setting. Out the trail and generally more of the same: designated 2-fer or some other special night meant the two-wheelers were en-route in clumps of 2-10, all with a singular destination in mind–to rejoin as one larger group, a community of like-minds for the evening. In this case the equalizers being a bike, a beer, and a bite. Without those I wonder if even 1/2 that collective group of laborers, blue-collar, professionals, and executives would ever spend time together. What would their common interest points be take away the obvious equalizers. The physician surely wouldn’t call up the administrator to come over and watch a few episodes of Dexter. The carpenter wouldn’t bring the executive along to a weekend family trip to the lake. Yet add a couple ingredients and they spend an entire afternoon and evening together as a community.
I’ve missed much of my community for several weeks; actually going back several months. A significant equalizer, and in some cases multiples have been disrupted, thus shrinking my community down to what sometimes feels like little more than a block party. We all need that sense of community lest we become shells of who we are, who we’d prefer to be. It’s often through others that we fully reach our potential, our identity—establish our role or place within an actual physical community. Few of us are equipped to trudge through it alone; countless examples observed over several days prove that out for lack of a federal grant to prove my case.
I decided to rejoin a community today; I’ll be participating (deliberate use of the word) in yet one more marathon early 2012. That’s a community that defines a part of me and the formal action of declaring yourself part of it is (ie. paying the fee) is the major step toward feeling, thus being part of it. Participating in it will be easy~~really it will. No pressure on competing; simply taking the step toward re-establishing the ability and place within the community. It was an easy choice; right up the highway and I’ve completed it a couple times already. Plus it’s National Running Day according to something or another and I saved $26 by signing up today! Yea me! Fewer than eight months til the gun sounds; I’d better start making a comeback plan.
AniMal