Making Connections

The story of the missing Kent County man coming on the heels of reading this article really got me thinking. 

 “The search continues for a Kent County man who’s been missing since Saturday afternoon. Robert Nylen, 62, was last seen walking into a wooded and swampy area near Buttrick Ave. and Bolt St. in Cascade Township. Authorities are concerned for Nylen’s well being because he appeared disoriented. Nylen is six-feet tall with a slim build and light blond hair. He was last seen covered in mud. He was wearing blue jeans but had no shoes on.”

Someone saw this man, walking with no shoes, covered in mud and appearing disoriented and they didn’t think to say anything? A simple, “Are you ok?” would have sufficed.  As a society, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we’ve become more and more isolated; as the population swells we seem to make less and less interpersonal contact with each other. We avoid looking each other in the eye, we don’t exchange pleasantries, we don’t pay attention to our surroundings. We wander around seemingly encapsulated in our own personal bubbles with no thought about those who are outside of our circle. I’m not trying to place blame here, but I think that this story speaks to some of the greater problems in our society. We’ve become so self-absorbed that the simple act of exchanging pleasantries with a stranger, acknowledging people who are outside of our social circle, who look like they might need help has become an act that is just too tiresome to be performed. It seems that we can’t be bothered to check in with each other. 

I’ve been really down on Muskegon lately, but I know that it’s not just Muskegon. Polite, civil society as  a whole seems to be decaying. As my good friend, Kyle, once pointed out to me, our society’s decline is directly interlinked with the diminishment of our “front porch” culture. When was the last time you hung out on your front porch and exchanged pleasantries with strangers walking by? I think I’ve done so maybe twice since moving to Muskegon, and in all honesty it’s because every time I do so, I get hit up for cash.  

But maybe I should keep trying. I don’t want to be a complainer, I want to be a doer. I don’t want to be complacent, I want to institute change. I want to be able to recognize those who truly need help and be able to say that I helped them, even if that help is only in the exchange of a pleasant greeting, a smile, a handshake. I don’t want to quietly watch the continued decline of our culture, I want to scream out and wake people up, shake them from their reveries and make them realize what it is that we’re facing – even if only through mundane small talk.

Being on the front lines of the next generation I want to know that I’m doing everything in my power to reverse the decline of polite society. I want to raise my children secure in the knowledge that they will have – and continue to seek out – a better world than the one that we currently inhabit.