Eventually, this newsletter will consist of more form and function, but as I get this project off the ground, my first five posts will highlight my first five days in South Bend from my own perspective.
This is day four of five.
You learn a lot about yourself on the road and one thing I’ve learned is that, if I’m not staying active, I start to fall apart, both physically and mentally.
So, I joined the local rec center as soon as I got to town.
I was primarily socialized by my participation in athletics growing up. And a fun fact, by my last count, I’ve actually coached, captained or competed on over 80 competitive athletic teams in my life. 🤯
Participation gave me my first definition of self-worth, my first immersion into social groups and their organization, and my first attempts at mastering systems in order to navigate within them. As a result, I’ve always understood people best through they way they express themselves and interact with one another both physically and mentally. That’s probably why I find rec centers to be so fascinating.
If you want to see people so raw and beautifully unfiltered, you don’t have to look much further. The children testing their invincibility in adult-sized pools and towering play places, the teens trying to prove and define themselves on the basketball court or dance room floor, and the adults trying to validate themselves in the weight room mirror or liberate themselves in a yoga, zumba or body pump class; that’s where you’ll find them all.
Whether it’s observing someone’s comedic lifting technique or admiring someone’s hard-earned physique, I don’t know if I’ve ever been in an environment where my eyes dart more than in the gym. It’s a place where you can regularly find yourself consistently caught between extreme overwhelm and complete zen throughout the process of breathing. It’s a place where you can always achieve something, a place where you can always learn from failure. It’s safe and, in so many ways, provides people with enough refuge to let down their guard for a few moments in a world that always has them on edge.
I’ve stopped wearing headphones too, choosing rather to immerse myself in the world around me and listen. Now, if I had a nickel for every darn time I’ve heard a middle-aged man offering unsolicited advice to an unsuspecting patron 🙄, a group of teens nervously chattering to build up confidence, or a person rationalizing underachievement and, in turn, being supported by their personal trainer… let’s just say 💰.
I enjoyed observing and listening to the community in its natural, recreational habitat during my first week in town.
On Monday night, I played pick-up basketball with the teens. It gave me a huge blister on my right heel and the kid I was guarding hit no less than four 3’s in my face, but I really enjoyed gaining insights into the young men these kids were becoming. Whether they realized it or not, it was easy to tell who viewed success as an individual achievement and who felt that it could only be reached collectively. I saw who could deal with adversity and who was still developing that ability. I remembered being that kid who would spend countless hours alone at my childhood rec center, The Pavilion, working on my jump shot and trying to learn those lessons for myself. It was a full-circle moment.
On Tuesday night, I ended up in a hot tub with two middle-aged men who had pristine dad bods. They went back-and-forth telling stories with one nonchalantly sharing while the other passively ignored in turn. One started with a pick-a-point-on-the-map-and-go-there road trip he had taken to Mt. Rushmore last year. Then the other referred to a road trip he had taken with his children when they were younger and the family was more adventurous. They finally settled on exchanging stories of the over-sized nine-seat station wagons that their parents had respectively owned back in the 70’s when they were kids themselves. It’s funny how their nostalgia unpeeled itself like an onion until they found a common sentimental reference point of better, more carefree days.
On Thursday night, I was wearing a throwback ultimate frisbee jersey with the Detroit Old English “D” on my chest when a skinny white guy with face and neck tats and mismatched streetwear sparked up a conversation with me in the weight room.
Him: “You from Detroit? I'm from Benton Harbor.”
Me: “Ann Arbor?”
Him: “No, Benton Harbor.”
Me: “Oh cool.”
Him: “Why you in South Bend?”
Me: “Working here for a month.”
Him: “What do you do?”
Me: “Uhhh, community economic development, I work with businesses.”
Him: “Oh, cool.”
Me: “Why are you here?”
Him: “Got into trouble back in Benton Harbor.”
Me: “Had to jump over the state line. I feel that.”
His experience wasn’t one that hadn’t heard before and I had noticed him earlier on, so I wasn’t that caught off guard when he had a story to share, but our unexpected conversation did leave me with a reflection...
As depicted by my professional-quality Canva job above, Benton Harbor is a third of the distance from South Bend as it is from Detroit, yet that young man felt a greater association to his home state than to his immediate region.
Having been fortunate enough to cross the border from San Diego to visit migrant centers in Tijuana last month, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the reality that some American’s relate more to their country’s prominence and it’s demagogic leadership in DC than they do to their neighbors along the border with Mexico.
Interestingly enough, two days after I spoke to that man in the gym, I ended up at a Smithsonian-sponsored exhibit on water at the Public Library in Niles, Michigan. That’s where I came across this photo above. It’s from 2014 and depicts the communities of Lajitas, Texas and Paso Lajitas, Mexico holding hands to form a human bridge across the Rio Grande to unite their towns.
United rather than divided, breaking down barriers rather than building up walls.
But I also acknowledge that in reaching out to start a superficial conversation with a complete stranger, that young man was probably looking for some kind of social connection. He grasped for the shared identity of being a Michigander because it gave him a sense of relevance and belonging beyond his own challenges, like being a sports fan, an American or even a Trump supporter.
And, to that extent, some people are just bigots, racists, supremacists and zealots, but I wonder how many Americans have defaulted into supporting our president’s white nationalist agenda because they find themselves in similar positions of insecurity, irrelevance and hardship. I wonder how many want the wall built because they genuinely believe it is the American thing to do. I wonder how many people are still blindly following the snake oil salesman offering them a second chance at the American Dream with his cheap shit made in China. I wonder… so hopefully this trip will help me find some answers.