09/06/2026
A healthy community is actually the default setting.
This is what most of us forget. We are built for community. Humans are optimistic by default. We want to believe tomorrow will be better than today. We tend to see the best in one another. We want to belong somewhere. A well-functioning, optimistic, self-reliant community is not some rare achievement. It is how we are meant to operate.
So why do so many of our towns feel like the opposite?
Because something has gone wrong with the soil. We have an imbalance. And when the healthy majority steps back from civic life, that void gets filled. In every instance I have witnessed, it never gets filled by people with good intentions. The bullies, the pessimists, the conspiracy theorists and the complainers fill it instead. Not because they are more numerous, but because the rest of us stopped showing up.
Here is what I want you to understand. Those people are not the norm. They are the weeds. They only dominate when the flowers disappear. And the flowers disappear when we stop tending to them.
The solution is not complicated. It does not require a strategic plan or a consultant or a comprehensive study. It requires the healthy majority to show up. To make civic life fun and social and worth participating in. No one has ever proven that a boring meeting is more effective. No one has shown me that joy in a process diminishes outcomes. People want to feel connected. They want to have fun. They want to be part of something worth caring about.
All of us deserve to live in places that make us happy, that provide us with rich social connections and a sense of belonging. Every one of us should have a place to call home that enhances our mental, social, physical and fiscal health.
Trust in human nature. Trust in your fellow community members. The weeds only win when we let them.
Show up. Tend to the field. Fill it with flowers.
