This essay was originally published on my site at usuallydave.com. Enjoy and all the best, Dave.

Walking the streets, the shadows stirred. Though there was evidence of life, it felt sparse. Rather than bustling with people, the streets were now filled with nothing but light… and the encroaching shadows.

People shuffled along, lost in their thoughts. Their own existence consuming their minds, blinding them to their surroundings.

With movements so plodding and silent it was like watching spirits quietly move from their world to ours. Breaking into this plane just long enough to be glimpsed before fading back to the spirit realm they now called home.

Streets once vibrant and filled with life now but an echo of a time long passed.

Everything needs fuel to thrive. The life blood that flows through a place depends on everyone feeding growth. The desire to create in harmony with your neighbors, that’s the secret. Life is all about community, no matter how much it feels like we struggle alone.

Juggling community and individuality… well that’s a delicate dance.

Without the right fuel, the proper maintenance, and everyone doing their part, everything and everyone begins to fall into a state of disrepair. We don’t notice the community begin to unravel around us, at least not at first.

Under our feet the metal rusts and the patina of decades of wear and tear appear. A few spots here and there, a minor ache you notice isn’t going away. Slowly it creeps in and is accepted as the new normal.

That daily hustle and bustle that once made the community so vibrant slows, until it’s merely a reflection. It becomes it’s very own “Once Upon A Time” or “Back in the day” and slips quietly to memory.

We notice an opportunity and sometimes set up shop and stay a while. A few thrive, but with the decline of community comes a lack of support. Business gets tough so we pull up stakes and move on to greener pastures.

As we, as I, wander the amazing yet lonely road of life I can’t help but think about community. Once they start to decline, can they be rebuilt? Is it all destined to fail once the decline begins?

Our adventure in life really is what we choose to make of it. There’s nothing stopping us from putting down roots and building our own thriving community.

We can’t do it alone, we need each other’s support to grow.

And when we reach the end of that long, winding road of life we hope to have left some sort of legacy behind.

In what might be the ultimate irony though, real human connection is vital to a good life. To build that legacy we need to build lasting relationships. We need traveling partners on our journey.

Yet, no matter how many miles we cover, in the end we leave alone and are all just passing through.