Building Community

As much as I’d like to, I don’t blame the person driving the city snow plow. He or she has a job to do. I can only imagine the challenge of navigating city streets in a big vehicle with a plow on the front of it. Or the frustration of swinging around cars whose owners neglected to move them, knowing it is your job to get that street clear and passable.

I do have my own frustrations though, as these hard working city employees pass by the corner sidewalk I cleared just 30 minutes prior and fill that same spot with densely packed snow removed from the street. I try to be a good neighbor. When the snow falls, I get out my small snow blower, clear the walk and take extra time to make a path at the corner so children heading off to school or anyone passing by will have access to the sidewalk without having to climb over a frozen mound. I do my part only to find a short while later it is as if I have done nothing at all. It feels like a complete waste of time and energy.

Sometimes it is hard to escape the question, why bother? If what you are doing is simply going to be undone, why make the effort in the first place? This is far from a new question, anyone familiar with the Hebrew sacred text known as Ecclesiastes will tell you the author would have not only understood, but expected the frustration of having a snowplow fill your freshly cleared pathway with hard packed snow. This writer of wisdom literature rhetorically asks, “What do people gain from all their toil at which they toil under the sun?” His answer is, not much. “All things are wearisome,” says Ecclesiastes, “more than one can express.”

Those who labored for years to see improvements on West 7th St. could hardly be blamed for joining Ecclesiastes in his lament or for simply asking the question, “why bother?” This is true regardless of the outcome that a person believed most desirable. If you were strongly in favor of one particular proposal or strongly in favor of its polar opposite, at the end of the day, it looked to many like the snow plow had just come through and all your previous hard work was for nothing. The one thing that most folks working on West 7th Street improvements likely had in common was a sense of weariness.

Why bother is a question all of us likely find ourselves asking from time to time. We put in the effort. We put in the time. We make our donations. We do our part. We look around and everything is as it was or what little progress that had been made is seemingly gone. It is a dynamic that applies to our personal lives, our families, our community and to our national politics where a growing number of people feel voting makes no difference at all, so “why bother?”

There is, of course, nothing wrong and perhaps necessary about speaking the truth regarding what we experience and naming our frustrations where they exist. There is no wisdom to be found in hiding from the truth. Yet, at the end of the day, the corner sidewalk, as with most everything in need of our time and attention, requires people willing to step up and make a difference.

Part of what keeps us from going back out there, from facing the frustrations, is the feeling that we are doing this on our own. It all falls on us to clear the walk. It makes a difference, therefore, when I look beyond my small section of sidewalk and cast my eyes up and down the street where my neighbors have been hard at work clearing their small sections as well. If what we do feels like it is regularly being undone then it is hard to escape the feeling of why bother, but when we recognize we are contributing to something bigger, then there is reason to grab our shovels and do what needs doing.