This past weekend, my husband and I attended The Best of Our State at Pinehurst Resort, a storied weekend that celebrates Our State magazine and, more importantly, North Carolina and draws a sellout crowd – hundreds of returning visitors each year – to enjoy speakers and artists representing various state regions and industries. A newbie to the conference, I was immediately fascinated by the group’s comradery. Folks not only reunite annually at this conference but also warmly welcome newcomers, like me, and we all share the same home: North Carolina.
I listened to Karen Amspacher share her love of and commitment to Harkers Island, a sparsely-populated hurricane-ravaged coastal community, rich in family history, and immediately realized that my husband and I had perhaps failed to cultivate in our own children or in ourselves her intense tie to her land and to her community. That’s what was present in this weekend, a profound communal feel.
Community has too often taken a backseat in our lives. We often find ourselves too busy, rushing from activity to activity, to appreciate the beauty in the land and in the people around us.
As I reflect on this weekend, I have surmised that, although my husband and I did an adequate job exposing our boys to North Carolina culture, especially to our Winston-Salem community and to our favorite eastern North Carolina stomping grounds, Oriental, Arapahoe, New Bern, and Emerald Isle, in retrospect, we could have, we should have, done more.
Today’s culture is increasingly global and transient. Both our boys have now flown the nest, and, although I am proud to say that they are financially independent, I wish that they felt a stronger tug to our great state. I have not ruled out the possibility that one or both could return home to take up residency in North Carolina, but that possibility seems more remote than I’d like. My oldest son is two-plus years post college graduation and on his second job, and that transition to a second job is the norm, both within his field and his peer group. Change is ever-present in our children’s lives. Instilling a sense of place, a true sense of home within our community, therefore, seems more important, more stabilizing than ever.
In hindsight, I wish we had been more intentional about exposing our children to the annual events within our community and within North Carolina. Our children are well-traveled, from border-to-border and beyond, but often their North Carolina travel was for sporting events that limited their exposure to a tennis court or a cross-country course, rather than affording them to soak up local haunts and products and to gain a sense of the community.
I share my misgivings with you, so you will benefit from them. Take time in 2020 to indulge in and appreciate local culture. Find time to share that culture with your children while you can. Do not avoid events for “lack of time.” Planting communal seeds may inure to your benefit in the long-term. And, if you need ideas, pick up a copy of Our State magazine, an award-winning publication second to none.