We Don't Have to Get Torn Apart

“I walk through the grocery store now and people glare at me,” one business owner said last week, surveying their establishment, which was filled with laughing, happy, smiling people.

“But look at what you’ve created. Look at all these happy people.”

“I know—I know, right? And I’m proud. But it’s come from so much hard work—years and years of hard work—and so much debt. We have so much debt. People think we’re greedy bastards, but we’re just struggling to survive and every little change? It could be our death blow.”

Another business owner said a similar thing. “Every day, every season, I think—are we going to make it? Is this going to be our last?”

This week there was a federal trial about cruise ships in our community. It’s a federal trial because there are federal question involved when our town voted to cap cruise ship disembarkations to 1,000 a day.

I’m not going to talk about the Supremacy Clause or other aspects of that here.

What I am going to talk about is how during the trial, they had a few witnesses. There were about five business owners who talked. They said how losing cruise ship customers would impact their businesses. Most said it would be a negative impact to no longer have that revenue. One said it would be positive. Another man (a lawyer, not a business owner) said that he avoids downtown when cruise ships are here.

This is all interesting to me because I actually go into town when cruise ships are here. I know! I know! Weirdo. But I like the crowds, seeing the people, hearing their stories, watching their awed faces as they look at the beauty that surrounds us.

Yesterday, a guy was out on the rocks by the bay, playing his saxophone toward a giant private yacht. Kids on the Congregational Church’s yard played shaving cream wiffle ball. A hotelier donated a matching grant of $20,000 to our overworked food pantry. Why is it overworked? Because people are hungry. People went to movies. People came home from being away. People swam and hugged and danced and learned at library events celebrating the legacy of Ashley Bryan.

All of this joy and beauty happened this week.

Our town of about 5,000 people sustain a massive tourism industry that will always be here. Why? Because a National Park is in our town (and beyond it) and fills up our island.

Every year and sometimes almost every month, the local newspaper runs articles about visitation to Acadia: it’s slightly up, it’s steady; it’s slightly down; it’s doubled. The twitches in the numbers for the Cat ferry (it sadly is not a ferry just for cats) which brings people (not cats) from the U.S. to Canada also make news. Cruise ships? Those numbers make headlines particularly after a citizen vote to limit disembarkations to 1,000 or less a day and the resultant federal lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of that change.

Earlier this year, the local chamber of commerce joined the organization that is the main party suing the town. Voters stripped the chamber of some of its funding that helps tourists find their ways around. They were angry. That’s okay. Channeled anger is an important way to make change in a community. But it’s not the only way.

There are large corporations in Bar Harbor, hotel chains mostly, but much of its business community is made up of locals employing locals and summer people. Some businesses provide some housing for summer employees. Some can barely provide housing for themselves.

Important work is happening and people are working together in ways to fix things like the need for housing.

But this lawsuit discussion has devolved into haves and have-nots. People aren’t talking about the Supremacy Clause, Commerce Clause or Due Process Clause, which are all so important and so interesting and central to the question. And some people aren’t talking about it at all because they are tired of it, maybe? Or tired of the rhetoric surrounding it?

I have no answers. I just report on things. And care about them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about two things in relation to this.

The first is just that I wish people could be kinder even when they disagree and even when they expose lies or greed or arrogance. And also when they get caught lying or being arrogant or greedy.

The second is that I wish that we could center the experiences of those who are directly impacted by things in ways that don’t involve court trials, but involve cooperation, of creating better systems and structures to allow that collaboration.

There’s this great stoic adage, which goes:

Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those who you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach.”

How cool would it be if a small town like mine could do that? If all of us people in it could help improve ourselves and each other in an inclusive way, a way that centers on building community instead of building division?

This isn’t just about my little town of Bar Harbor, Maine, obviously. It’s true about our families, our friendship circles, our country. We are all connected.

You are who you hang out with is something my sweet, little hobbit dad told me over and over again when I was a little kid. He always chose to hang out with people that he thought were better than he was, people who made him laugh, people who hugged and talked and listened. In my whole life, I only heard my dad yell once. I was three.

There are studies that tell us that if your friends smoke after a couple of years, you’re likely to smoke. The same is true about weight gain.

What if we all chose to hang out with people who lifted us up instead of pushing us down?

What if we all chose to hang out with people who made kindness a priority instead of hate?

What if we all chose to do those things ourselves? To lift. To be kind. To collaborate.

Seriously. How cool would that be? Instead of a divided community, we could be an inspired community? Instead of a community of division, we could become a community of togetherness?

It’d be super freaking cool.

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