Be Brave Friday: Being Pillars

This is actually the third BE BRAVE FRIDAY that I’ve tried today.

The third!

One was about empathy. One was about not giving in to chaos. And now this one?

It’s just about this: supporting each other.

That picture at the top of this post is a stone fencepost that once held a beautiful wooden fence near the Shore Path in our town. The path, which winds around a bit of Bar Harbor shorefront was destroyed in multiple places by a duo of winter storms last year.

All these people have raised funds and worked together to rebuild it.

Even when there is no fanfare, even when the amount of money needed to be raised has seemed impossible, they have worked and fundraised and thought of ideas to get people to support the project, and then they’ve worked more. People have come in and done the planning and the grading and the rebuilding, working even in winter.

That path is almost done. The work is almost finished.

In communities, it takes all of us to be brave, to choose to do good, to choose to lift up our neighbors, to support each other, to try to not jump to negative conclusions all the time.

That can be hard.

It takes all of us to work toward good, to stand as pillars to that good, to be the support that not just mends those fences, but holds it all together.

It’s brave to do that, right? Because you’re standing out there, facing storms, watching tides come and go, dealing with wrath. But you also get to stand out there and see beauty: happy dogs strolling by, families creating memories, people building things together?

And hopefully that makes it worth it.

---