The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

I find I am now pleasantly surprised by a kind gesture from anybody, including family, friends or people outside of my immediate small circle. It feels rare. And I include any kind gestures coming from business people, either owners or their employees, who directly encounter customers.

Yes, the changing status of kind gestures is a condition of modern life due in part to the pandemic’s current circumstances. Regardless, a gracious gesture or word transforms the moment.

My life as a senior citizen in Waitsburg is pretty darn easy compared to what I know is happening around the country and throughout the world. Nobody can get away from the pandemic, the election, racism, wildfires and smoke, serious drug trafficking, and more. But in general, day to day life in a small town is comforting in ways that aren’t as readily available in many places.

Of course, I may be kidding myself by effortlessly dismissing the subjects I just mentioned in the last sentence. They are deadly serious. Our small-town life resembles something older folks, like me, remember with a sense of security. Still, we know we are looking at it, as the saying goes, in the rearview mirror as we race toward an unknown destination.

Fires and smoke are not happening for some mysterious reason, the pandemic is not just a random event, and our failure as a nation to deal with it can be explained. The angry disputes in national and state politics have origins with clear historical, financial, and societal evidence as to why. These things can be understood.

But a real shocker to me is the outcome of the roles we have accepted by being on-line, purchasing products with a keystroke, obtaining what we think is accurate information from others, and sharing personal information via social media on our phones and computers.

It all started out feeling so benign, with easier and cheaper ways to buy any products and services. Exchanging person to person conversations with texts and emails lets us avoid the challenges of one-on-one conversations and relationships. Within a very short time, our corporate-driven, internet purchasing has gutted America’s traditional business practices. Now social media is destroying the sincere links between people and their communities.

Perhaps you decide this is not so. You don’t do that. You may believe that we, as a nation, are merely going about problem-solving as best we can under some pretty dramatic circumstances. That innovation solves everything, and the faster, the better.

Unfortunately, as we have benefitted from digital and social media innovations, we have also been giving personal data to corporations who profit as their actions damage our system of government.

If you do have a sense that yes, in fact, things are feeling way out of hand and how on earth did we get here, you might consider watching a documentary now on Netflix called The Social Dilemma. The editor of this paper wrote about the movie last week.

May I make a mild suggestion for hard times: consider volunteering for anything. Get back to the one-on-one game. Helping your local community may be an immediate way to help rebuild a foundation of care, even in a friendly little town doing okay. Or sort of okay.

Show up, in person, and in a kind way, for anything. And if you already are, thank you. You are transforming our moments.