Hey reader(s),
So today I was just lounging around (I got off university a bit ago so I'm just enjoying the relaxing time before I head back up for summer courses). I decided to watch some tv and came across Leap Year. It was the only last half hour but still, I remembered liking the ending so I watched it. For those who have not watched it and plan to you may wish to stop reading. And for those of you who don't care, here's the summary:
Anna Brady from Boston is a planner that stages apartments for Realtors. Anna has been dating cardiologist, Jeremy, for four years and they are buying a high standard apartment in Davenport together. Anna expects Jeremy to propose to her on a dinner date but he gives her a gift instead, after which he travels to Dublin for a congress. Anna decides to meet him in Dublin on the February 29th and propose to him in accordance with an old Irish folklore tradition from the Fifth Century of leap-year proposals by women. However, her airplane is forced to land in Wales due to bad weather and she is not able to find a connection since the Dublin airport is closed. She decides to travel on a supply vessel but is forced to disembark in Dingle due to a storm. Anna walks to the only restaurant and inn and hires the unfriendly owner Declan to drive her to Dublin. Declan agrees to drive her as he needs the money to pay of his debts but their journey is fraught with many incidents.
So here I am watching this movie and I can't help but notice the beautiful landscape, the laid-back attitude, and the kindness of a neighbour. I am always searching for a place the will make my heart smile like the people from this movie did. A town that is truly a supportive and loving community. Also small with a few quirks. So far I have not found that. I grew up in this small town for 19 years. It was amazing to grow up in (as an elementary school student) but as the years went on, it started growing rapidly with buildings that we did not really need and people that we could not properly accomodate. I feel so closed in here. I miss the open feel this town had. Then I moved to an even bigger town for university, while I do like it there it is not somewhere I could live forever. I dream about the day I can settle in to a place and say, "this is home, I could live here forever".
The community of the days of old has been made obsolete by globalization, industrialization, technology. Large companies have destroyed a locations necessity to depend on the people who live there.
ReplyDeleteOnce, there were people who either gathered food from their surroundings or farmed the land, and those people who lived in that area depended largely on that food production. Likewise, people made their own clothing and shelter. Likewise, when conditions turned on them, they had to rely on one another in order to survive.
The lack of a necessity to survive in such a basal way has killed the sense of a "community" because it only existed while people needed one another. In a capitalistic, globalization, technological world where we can travel anywhere at any given time and buy anything from anywhere and speak with people at any given time - our community has actually become the companies who provide for our needs and the factories who supply their means.
It's sad, yes. But, this is what we've been born into and this is the community we know. And, as long as we continue to allow companies and large governments to determine how our basal natural needs are met, we will not be able to return to the communities of old. Only when we take our needs back into our own hands and share it with the individuals physically around us will we see a real community develop.