The Berlin Blog

A place to call home

By Redcoat | August 22, 2010

Like most Berlin residents, I spent some time away from home this Summer - a week here, a weekend there. Regardless of where one goes, one thing always remains the same. Coming home.

There is something about belonging to a place. Knowing the ebbs and flows of it, recognizing the sounds and faces - all without thinking. Walking through my neighborhood I bring barking dogs to a halt by greeting them by name, I see how the quality of the evening baseball toss of the two boys next door has improved this Summer, I smile at the little boy down the street eagerly waiting for the sight of my dog so that he can talk to her. The instinctive wave, the easy smile, the casual greeting - all the natural, almost inevitable, outcome of belonging to a place, of being rooted in a community, of having a place to call home.

Of course, belonging is less a function of geography than it is of relationships. It is those ties that connect us - the neighbor who always offers to look after things while you’re away, the annual late-Summer cookout that the family down the street never forgets to invite you to, the high school boy who mows the lawn of the recent widow without being asked - that define community. It is what we come back to when after we have been away, more than the recognizable streets or familiar landscapes.

But this community that we have built - friendly gesture by friendly gesture, kind word by kind word, thoughtful deed by thought deed - can be unraveled in the same way. By angry remarks and personal attacks; by thoughtless gestures and divisive deeds. It has always been my belief that as a member of a community we have a responsibility to preserve, indeed advance and deepen, this community to which we belong. We benefit from the actions and goodwill of those who preceded us and, consequently, we have a similar responsibility to protect and build upon this gift for those that will follow us. That’s why we name buildings and schools and parks after benefactors and war dead, it’s why we invest in public spaces and buildings, it’s why we plant trees and preserve open space.

As we come to the end of the quiet of Summer and prepare to begin a new school year, with all of the challenges and debates that accompany a year of projects and budgets and referendums, we would do well to remember our individual responsibility to our community and one another. When we debate, once again, the wisdom and necessity of renovating the High School, one would hope (apparently against all evidence to the contrary) that the debate is an informed, thoughtful and respectful one, with an eye toward the future. Similarly, we each should be wary of those that engage in debate and politics that is not respectful of the fragility of the community that others have built. Perhaps not every individual who engages in heated rhetoric and inflammatory attacks is deliberately waging war on our community’s foundation, but the willingness to so casually and recklessly utilize these tactics, despite the fact that it undermines that which others have so carefully built, results in the same cost. A community divided and broken, residents at odds with one another, a fixation on winners and losers as opposed to moving forward together.

Think of it. If individuals in our neighborhood acted in the same way that some of our political leaders do when engaged in public debate - routinely lying, personally attacking others, ignoring the needs of others to better further their own ends - we would pull back from them in revulsion, we would ignore them and not include them within what we consider to be our community. We would do this because we have expectations about how our neighbors should act, that there is an unspoken agreement that every individual has worth and deserves to be treated with respect. But if we don’t tolerate this sort of behavior in our personal lives, why is it that we not only tolerate this behavior but often endorse it in our public lives? What is it that allows ourselves to depersonalize others so that we no longer have a responsibility to treat them with respect? How is it that we seemingly fail to grasp that it is impossible to tear down other groups and individuals without doing the same to the community that we live in? We are better than that and, if we are do move forward together, we must be better than that.

Berlin is my home. My home - our home - is a special place thanks to the efforts of thousands of individuals and millions of acts of unselfishness, foresight and caring. Perhaps it’s time to recognize our home for the treasure that it is, and treat it - and each other - in a way that cherishes this gift. To act in a manner that is worthy of this place that we call home.

Topics: Community | 4 Comments »

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