It's 9AM
I have a love/hate relationship with my hometown.
But you’re not from there, she said.
Not anymore.
Which made me wonder.
Where is your hometown?
What do you consider home?
Is it where I live now?
An hour North of Pine Bluff?
Is it where I spent the majority of my youth and where my grandparents are buried?
Where I own property and try hard to think about ways to save the dying town?
Or is it where my heart feels most at peace?
That would put home in Florida, on a beach 45 minutes outside of Orlando.
Parked on the sand two hundred yards from some of the best burgers on the East coast under a sign that promises “the coldest beer.”
Or can we feel home in different places?
Is home a state of mind?
Maybe it can be.
Maybe home is the place where we feel safe.
Even if I don’t always feel safe in Pine Bluff.
Logic dictates I should, though.
Most of the homicide activity in my growing up hometown is black on black crime.
Young black men killing young black men for some dumb reason.
It is an epidemic.
And unless I get caught in crossfire while driving through not so nice neighborhood in search of real estate bargains, not something I need worry about.
Though as someone concerned about my growing up hometown, I am troubled by the epidemic.
I don’t know the answers though.
Better jobs? Better opportunities? More hope?
Or are those things I think would be improvements but aren’t what people need?
It’s all been tried before.
Other places and there.
Some of it works. Some of it doesn’t.
And no one seems to know if there is a magic formula.
Or if the magic formula is some snake oil sold to voters, sold to businesses, just plain sold and gone and citizens left wondering what just happened.
As a student of some history, it is easy to glorify the past and vilify the present, which impacts the direction of the future.
And if all we focus on are the things that are going wrong, which is how we are designed, then we amplify the impression of everything being wrong.
We focus on what’s wrong, because that’s the threat.
Threat to safety. Threat to security. Threat to family.
And most of us get riled up when something threatens our world.
Some of us get riled up when something threatens our world view, which is just how we think of things.
Riled up can be a good thing.
Outrage is a useful tool when directed properly.
I know it’s tough to think of rage as being constructive, but sometimes it is the one act or the one thing that sparks the courage to begin the change.
Because the most dangerous thing in the world isn’t young men shooting each other.
Men have killed each other for as long as we have roamed the earth.
It isn’t a factory leaving town, or the disintegration of the nuclear family.
It isn’t the internet or video games or rock and roll music or any of the other annual outrages that have turned into marches and protests or prognostications of the end of civilization.
No, I think the most dangerous thing in the world is apathy.
The simple act of not caring.
Not caring about the killing. Not caring about the litter. Not caring about the opportunities or the actions or the world around us.
And maybe a heart big enough to care about these things, all the things, is strong enough to wonder about what could make it all better.
There is a great line in a Harry Potter book about why wizards hide from normal humans.
It goes along the lines of “if muggles thought we could solve all their problems with a snap of the finger, we’d never get any peace.”
Good intentions sometimes mean bad outcomes.
Hell, there’s a proverb about the road to hell being paved with them.
Which makes apathy even more attractive.
A whole “why bother” attitude.
But then…
I’m reminded of why.
Home.
I’m sure there’s a proverb about that too.
Home is why we bother.
And if you don’t feel at home where you are, make it so.
It starts with kindness.
Kindness kills apathy.
To your neighbor.
To other drivers.
Simple acts of kindness.
Like smiling.
And waving.
When is the last time you waved at a stranger?
No, I don’t think waving will save the world.
Nor will a smile.
But smiling and waving will release hormones that are good for your heart.
Home is where the heart is.
Shouldn’t you take good care of it?
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