Trying to Live the Motto

I’ve been thinking about our city motto lately.

Stop. I get it. It's a weird thing to think about. Most of you probably don't sit on your porch, watching cars drive down Muskegon Street, pondering the philosophical meaning of our city's motto. Just humor me and read the rest of this.

If you haven't seen it on your water bill recently, the motto states, "Cedar Springs - Cherishing our Heritage. Embracing our Future.”

It's a warm sentiment, really. It's like saying, "We know who we are and where we're going!"

It sounds good. It's both balanced and responsible. The kind of phrase you read and just nod along to without much debate. And honestly, I don't just like it, I love this motto.

But the longer I sit with it, and the more I think on it, the more I realize those two ideas don’t always go together as easily as they look on paper.

Do you know what I mean?

Because when we say we want progress, sometimes I think what we really mean is movement.

We mean we don’t want Cedar Springs to feel stuck. We want to see something happening in the empty spaces. We want to know we’re not getting left behind while everything around us changes. There’s something reassuring about visible growth. It feels like momentum, like we're not just stuck in neutral. Like we’re headed somewhere.

And then other times, when we say we want progress, I think what we really mean is protection.

We mean we don’t want to wake up one morning, drive down Main Street, and feel like we missed something. Like the town secretly swapped out its identity in the middle of the night while we were all sleeping. We want the landmarks to still be there. The stories to still matter. The things that made us proud to live here to still feel recognizable.

These aren’t opposite instincts. But they don’t exactly move in lockstep either.

If I’m honest, I can feel both of them in myself, sometimes simultaneously.

There are days I drive through town and think, "This is good. Things are happening. Look at these improvements!" And then there are days I catch myself staring a little too long at a change and thinking, "huh… not really sure how I feel about that."

It's at this point I turn back to our motto. Actually, this is where the motto gets real.

Cherishing our heritage is stable and grounded. Embracing our future is hopeful and forward‑leaning. Put them next to each other and it reads like a feel-good statement. This isn't to diminish the true intent behind it, but after feeling like both "wow this is great" and "oh no, that's not who we are," I turn back to the idea and wonder how it can be accomplished.

Actually trying to live them out at the same time? Some days it feels nearly impossible.

Because cherishing asks us to slow down and remember. To value what came before us, and to admit that not everything old needs replacing just because it’s old. It asks us to weigh progress against the best and worst of what has been before.

Embracing asks us to lean in. To accept that some change is necessary. To believe that what’s ahead might be good, even if it doesn’t look exactly like what we’re used to. Embracing asks us to weigh hesitation against opportunity.

Wait a minute...are we getting somewhere with this?

When a new project comes up, or a building comes down, or something new goes up, we tend to sort ourselves pretty quickly. For progress. Against progress.

But I wonder if most of us are actually trying to do the same thing, just starting from different halves of that sentence.

Some of us hold tightly to the heritage piece because we know how hard it is to get something back once it’s gone. We know that history was made, that what was old is why we are where we are. It's what refined us and shaped us.

Others lean into the future because we know how easy it is for a town to stall out if it refuses to adapt. We're tired of feeling as though we're "behind the times" in terms of what we have to offer ourselves. "We need a car wash...but a good one!" "We need a Wal Mart to compete with Meijer!" These are two ideas I've actually read in the comments.

Neither instinct is careless. Neither one of these is automatically right all the time either.

From where I sit, I don’t see the tension as proof that we’re at odds beyond repair. I see it as what naturally happens when people care deeply about the same place but picture its future a little differently.

Progress here probably isn’t going to come from deciding once and for all which half of the motto matters more. It’s going to come from the slower, sometimes frustrating work of recalibrating. Of asking, again and again, whether we’re protecting what truly defines us or just resisting change out of habit, and whether we’re chasing something new because it’s genuinely needed or simply because it feels like movement. Or even just for more tax revenue.

Holding onto heritage while stepping into the future isn’t a problem we’ll solve and check off a list. It’s something we’re going to keep navigating project by project, vote by vote, conversation by conversation, and long after the current debates fade and new ones take their place.

And maybe that ongoing negotiation isn’t a weakness at all. Maybe it’s just the reality of trying to live out a motto that sounds simple, but was never meant to be easy.