How Do You Rebuild Trust?
One Celebration, One Kindness At A Time
This morning I woke up early and headed to the Conners Emerson School in Bar Harbor, which is this adorable K-8 grade school that needs a rebuild. Our town has just voted to take out a massive multi-million-dollar bond to do just that.
The vote was hugely in favor even though it increases everyone’s property taxes at a time when a lot of people are being priced out of our community.
That wasn’t what this morning was about.
This morning was about community.
A bunch of families and children bustled around the entrance to the school even though school days for students hadn’t started yet. This was the first day back for staff. Some kids made signs welcoming teachers. Some pushed against their moms, waiting, anticipating the teachers’ and staff members’ arrivals. Some wore school pride t-shirts and some wore softball and baseball shirts.
They hugged each other as they took their places, caught up.
“Good morning! Good morning!” The words became a cheer themselves.
“Oh! Oh! I think I see Wesley!”
“Do you wanna to hold your sign?”
“Momma! I do! I do!”
The sign? It said, “Teachers rock.”
“Mommy,” one little girl said, “when are the teachers coming?”
“Very soon.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am very sure.”
The little girl held her sign, now torn in half. She stared up at the people gathering. She waited. A car rolled into the parking lot.
“Is that one?” she whispered.
“I think so,” her mom said as a dad from another family rolled out the red carpet.
Another mom brought a portable radio player for music.
“We Are Family” played in the background.
“Let’s go find the rock,” one little boy told another, “and wait together.”
“Cool,” the other boy said.
The ran five steps to a rock. They climbed it together.
“Will they be here soon?” the girl asked her mom again.
“I see Ms. Bouchard coming right now.”
“Okay guys, get in position!”
One staff member came in. Then another. Squeals and applause and hugs and fist bumps greeted them. It happened over and over. The principal, Dr. Heather Weir Webster, walked backward out of the building onto the red carpet just so that she could walk in.
A community is about more than what divides it, more than what makes news headlines and angry social media posts. A community is about the ties that link us together.
In an interview with the New York Times that talks about loneliness Robert Putnam says, “Ties that link you to people like yourself are called bonding social capital. So, my ties to other elderly, male, white, Jewish professors — that’s my bonding social capital. And bridging social capital is your ties to people unlike yourself. So my ties to people of a different generation or a different gender or a different religion or a different politic or whatever, that’s my bridging social capital.”
So, how does a community that has segments that are politically polarized join together? How do the people within it become less lonely, become less divided, increase both their bonding and bridging social capital?
It’s things like the Conners Emerson event, people working together to rehabilitate a trail in Acadia National Park, gathering to hear music at a downtown restaurant, seeing plays and shadow theater at the Criterion Theatre. It’s things like Island Connections where volunteers help bring meals and give rides to people who need them.
Putnam also says, “To what extent do we think that we’re all in this together, or it’s every man for himself, or every man or woman? …. What stands upstream of all these other trends is morality, a sense that we’re all in this together and that we have obligations to other people…. We’re not going to fix polarization, inequality, social isolation until, first of all, we start feeling we have an obligation to care for other people. And that’s not easy, so don’t ask me how to do that.”
It involves trust. It involves celebration. It involves being trustworthy yourself so that others can trust you if you’re part of a government or a school or a company or a nonprofit or just a family or a news site. It’s all connected. It’s all important.
But part of what’s also important is seeing and embracing the joy, the good, the connections, too. It’s about being excited to see people. It’s about celebrating them. It’s also about climbing up on a rock together sometimes and just hanging out.
All photos and video Shaun Farrar and Carrie Jones.
I’m likely going to repurpose this post for our news site, The Bar Harbor Story. Apologies to those of you how subscribe to both things.