Editorial: Red Hawks Of A Feather Flock Together

If you spend enough time on social media, it starts to feel like the whole country is locked in a shouting match. Every issue turns into a contest and every national headline asks you to pick sides of polarized issues.

Ask a resident here in Cedar Springs, and they'll probably tell you that isn’t how local life tends to unfold.

Around here, the conversations tend to circle back to familiar ground. Property taxes. Water bills, (we won't even go into the color of the water at times).

The need for a local teen "hotspot" where kids can safely hang out after school.

These concerns belong to everyone who lives here. They show up at kitchen tables, in the aisles at Meijer while catching up with a neighbor, and in conversation outside Beach or Cedar View before pickup. They come up at church and at the gas pump. Simply put, they're the real concerns of daily life.

When our attention stays fixed on national arguments, it drains energy and motivation from us. You can feel it after an hour of reading comments. You can feel it after doomscrolling through a dozen reels. You’ve reacted to people you’ll never even meet. And all the while taxes are still going up, the water bills are still due, and the kids still don't have a place to gather.

There’s a reason outrage travels so quickly. It's the same reason national news outlets keep it in front of your face. Anger sells. It keeps us engaged. It keeps us clicking. It keeps us occupied with people far away. Meanwhile, the work of a town, the slow and sometimes frustrating work of it, asks for something different. It asks for patience. It asks for presence.

But in a small town, you can’t reduce people to campaign slogans for long. The person you disagree with on an issue is still the one serving your coffee, fixing your furnace, and coaching your kid’s team. You're bound to run into each other again because you probably share the same streets and almost certainly the same weather and the same future.

That reality changes the tone of a conversation. It doesn’t erase disagreement. Though, it does make it harder to treat someone like an abstract enemy.

If there’s anything I can encourage you to do this week, it’s simply this:

Take half an hour you might have spent in a comment thread and use it for the community. Walk into a meeting and sit in the back. Take a moment after to ask how a decision was made. Knock on a neighbor’s door and ask how rising costs are affecting them. If that's too deep a conversation, simply ask how they're doing. Walk a few blocks and pay attention to what needs fixing, then find out who’s responsible.

You won’t solve everything in thirty minutes. No one expects you to. What you will do is anchor your attention where your life actually happens.

Many of you have probably heard of the issues facing the Sand Lake community. We are, if I may be frank, fortunate not to be facing the same uncertainty their community is. But to keep it that way, Cedar Springs needs us to show up. It needs us willing to look each other in the eye and stay in the conversation.

Photo courtesy of: Kristen's Flashback Photography

A town holds together when people keep talking, even when it’s uncomfortable and especially when it's not about the next new Instagram trend. It holds together when questions are asked face to face and answers are expected in return.

That kind of effort rarely makes headlines. It does, however, over time, shape the place we call home.