I’m a journalist, so you’ll have to excuse my unabashed love of quotes. This week I’m falling back on the words of author and historian Edward Everett Hale who said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
I think those are words we really need to hear in Fountain Hills right now, as we have clearly become a community divided.
Whether it’s because of party lines, ideals or ideologies, this town has done its fair share of fracturing in recent years and, as of late, those cracks are really starting to show.
This isn’t just a Democrat versus Republican situation (We’ve got a Tea Party in town who will gladly remind you there are frequently more than two sides to any argument). This isn’t just conservative versus liberal, either. It isn’t just millennials versus senior citizens or full-time residents versus seasonal visitors. There are as many sides as there are items to quarrel over these days, and we’re certainly doing our fair share of quarreling.
Some of the most common phrases I hear around town are, “This isn’t the Fountain Hills I know and love” or “I don’t remember the community ever feeling so tense.” I’ve heard what used to constantly be referred to as a “quiet, beautiful community” now being compared to a powder keg, ready to explode.
So the question is, what has changed? What can be blamed for this shift in tone?
Sorry, that was a trick question. If you quickly pointed a finger or thought to yourself, “It’s so-and-so,” I believe you’ve only strengthened my argument that it’s actually all of us, and it’s especially fueled by that knee-jerk reaction to blame “the other.”
No matter what we consider the “big issue,” we’ve all got our ideas about what is right. And if I know that I’m right, then the other person has to be wrong. But what’s worrisome here is that we now equate “wrong” with “adversary,” and that kind of mentality only festers and causes harm.
We so desperately want to be right that we’re willing to go to great lengths to not only prove that the other side is wrong, but to actually hurt them in the process. We want it to sting. We want them to regret that they ever had the nerve to think differently than ourselves.
Once that kind of thinking settles in, the tiny fractures dividing a community crack open wider and wider and, if we’re not careful, we’re all going to fall in (no matter who was right or wrong).
So now I’m going to turn to another quote, one that I think we’ve all heard in recent years, especially if we have youngsters in our lives: “Let it go.” I’m not going to sing it like Princess Elsa in “Frozen,” but I mean it just as passionately.
We’re neighbors, for crying out loud. We’re supposed to be a community. We serve side by side at Make a Difference Day, sit at the same tables during Oktoberfest and cheer for our kids in the same stands during the volleyball match. There is far more in Fountain Hills that unites us than separates us, and yet we let the latter define who we are.
We can move beyond this, but only if we work together. We’ve got to let some things go, especially blame. And unburdened by that weight, perhaps we can finally start moving forward again.
