Many Paths: Leaving provides an opportunity to build a stronger community
Leaving. We all do it at some point in our lives. Sometimes it's happy, sometimes sad. Sometimes we cannot wait to leave. Sometimes something leaves us despite how badly we wished it could have stayed, and sometimes, we leave somewhere or someone no matter how much it aches us to do so.
In its simplest form, the word means to not remain somewhere, to “go away from." Yet we all know leaving can mean so much more. Leaving is change, whether we're ready or not.
As I’ve written before, I am a senior in high school, so the idea of “leaving” has been the most prominent theme of this last year for me. Now, I write was. I was a senior. I graduated in May, like lots of other teenagers in Knox County.
It seemingly crept up on us, despite the fact myself and undoubtedly most others like me have been racing to the precipice of our future the whole year. It's no big deal necessarily, I don't intend to dramatize merely graduating as some coming of age film where we all are the main character. But some of us are undeniably tempted by the exhilaration of the question, “what if?” and the childlike anticipation of finding the answer that lies only within moving on. The answer that lies only within leaving.
For me, that next step in my future is college. While it is different for everyone, the basis of every young person's recent thrust into young adulthood is the fact that we're changing. I see it in everyone around me. Suddenly people I have known since we explicitly wore Velcro shoes and still sang our alphabet are becoming new versions of themselves, forging the person they are going to be in the world.
We are going to school to be doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, carpenters, electricians and more. Getting our summers cut short to go and selflessly serve our country.
Some will stay, and some will leave, both equally as rightful. Yet we are all leaving who we once were. All for different reasons yes, but ultimately because time seems to keep passing and change gives us all hope for the notion that we can become something worth becoming: a version of ourselves who we can't wait to meet.
Even though leaving can be exciting, there is an undeniable sense of sadness attached to the word, and for good reason. Sometimes people leave and they don't come back.
In some situations, there is no mend for that. Sometimes, someone leaving is out of our control, like when someone dies. Even when this is not the case, leaving can still be heartbreaking. You might miss someone like crazy and are left feeling only half satisfied with a text message or video call.
You might miss someone, and they don't feel the same. You might be homesick. You might have left something behind and would give anything for five more minutes. I could go on about the amount of sadness that leaving can bring, but I wholeheartedly believe that the word leaving always provides the comforting implication that whatever it is, it can come back.
So, if people are leaving our town, how do we get them to come back? That's the hope for a thriving community: to send people out to get degrees, education or experiences, and then come back and use them to benefit the city as a whole.
I really think that Galesburg has a lot going for it, and that there is nothing like a city that feels like home. There is a lot to admire about a town where there is a strong community bond. Where kids still play in the street, porch and streetlights flicker and events are happening.
Free movies at the Orpheum, first Fridays on Seminary Street where all of our local businesses line the brick road with vendor tents, community centers and library construction.
Those are all things that make a current resident to be proud of while providing a sense of the future and honoring the past.
Despite the fact that I am going away to a big city in August, and I dream about the opportunities “elsewhere” can give me, I still have a special place in my heart for the feeling home has given me.
I hope to be able to make a settled down life somewhere like Galesburg. If we make efforts to create our town to be a safe, inviting, lively place, filled with job opportunities and growth driven inhabitants, hidden gems of the Midwest will cease to feel so hidden.
Leaving is only an opportunity to come back, and I believe we all can make “home” one worth coming back to.
Sarah Brown is a Williamsfield High School graduate with a passion for writing. She contributes to the weekly Many Paths column.
This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Many Paths: Those who leave Galesburg can turn it into a stronger city
