There’re lots of transient North Americans living in our little Mexican town every winter. As the weather gets hot in the spring, they return North.
In the industrialized world, moving is common. We do it all the time for work, love, or for a better climate. So far, I’ve lived for long periods in three different spots.
How’s a community built and sustained if you’re not a local?Sometimes we discover the picture we thought you had, that everybody thought we had, actually turns out to be wrong. Building a permanent and sustainable community takes time.
The problem seems to be how to connect when connecting is time limited. When it comes to community, you get what you give. I don’t know what the right mix of time and place is, maybe there really isn’t one. We just have roots in different spots and those roots will just be a little weaker than the roots that are in one spot.
The situation reminds me of Segal’s law which says “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”