Heidelberg - The Face of Yesterday, Today
“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.”
~ (French sculptor Auguste Rodin)
It’s easy to get caught up in the way things used to be or, more specifically, the way things no longer are. Of course, all you need to do is drive around pretty much any community (from small one-stoplight towns to big cities) and you’ll find a lot of left behind.
Strip malls and super-centers, mom & pop stores and farms, homes and even entire neighborhoods that are nothing more than shells now, empty and abandoned and often decrepit remnants of what used to be.
These places represent, in more ways than one, the collective experience of a 21st Century life. Their flickery-florescent-lights-dangling-loose-from-the-ceiling aesthetic mirrors the way many people feel inside.
A Different Kind of Tree
Unrecognizable. Ruined. Lost.
There seems to be a pervasive sense of crumbling and collapse in the psyche of many people these days. A feeling that everything once great and promising is gone. But not forgotten!
Anything but forgotten actually.
At the same time, there’s also this expansive movement of mindfulness and of people not merely seeking answers or direction, but the means by which to have some say again in their own lives.
“Creativity” is a buzz word and with good reason. Life, as we know it, requires a creative approach. It’s not just business as usual. It’s not just anything as usual.
But hope is still out there!
A hope that isn’t muddled or diluted by contentment for simply existing, for merely getting by. A hope that things can and will and should get better. That individuals and communities and businesses will find new ways to thrive.
With this blog, we intend to inspire, to inform, to educate, and to empower. That’s part of the The Best Me’s mission.
We want to introduce you to people who are finding ways to make a difference. In their communities, but also in their own lives. People who have incorporated their creative side in some way – whether they’ve built their own rowboat and paddled it 3,600 miles across the Atlantic or they’re seeking ways to help people and communities become healthier and more self-sustainable.
Why? We want you to see yourself in the people with whom we talk. That’s why we’re talking with them in the first place.
“The artist is not a different kind of person,
but every person is a different kind of artist.”
~ Eric Gill
Today’s post is about a personal project and a community project started by one man twenty-six years ago that has moved beyond inspiring his neighbors to inspiring people all over the world.
Heidelberg Project Panorama - Heidelberg Street in Detroit