Opinion: To Love Our Communities We Must First Love Ourselves

By Robert Messenger

First published on LinkedIn, February 12, 2021

” I am merely a hypocrite if I work to coordinate the city’s Active Transportation Plan if it is not a concept I apply to myself. To be a long-range planner, current planner or building inspector/permit technician we need to practice what we preach – we too need to be sustainable and well-built. “

As a city planner and government employee, how can I encourage the city to be more healthy, resilient and sustainable if I do not embrace these concepts in my own life? How can one “Be the change” without changing herself or himself?

I am happy to have a good job in a non-toxic work environment and live in a good city. However, like the City of Las Cruces that I am growing to love, I too have allowed myself to become a sprawling and not so sustainable version of what I and we could aspire to be. I mean this with love for the city and myself in a constructive fashion. A city is more than the built environment of districts, neighborhoods, roads and buildings. It is an organic, living, breathing creature. It consists of me, you and collectively us – and not “us and them”, as the rock group Pink Floyd noted in a song.

How can I encourage the city to have a more compact form, when I have allowed myself to be less compact and more sprawling? Now that I have a full-time, sedentary job, I need to disrupt my own inclinations to drive everywhere, eat fast food and not get enough physical activity on a regular basis. I cannot sustain a healthy relationship with myself, my new employer and my city if I am not willing to make a sustained effort to embody healthy practices for myself. I cannot expect to wait until the weekends to catch up on sleep and do physical activities like hiking and biking.

I am merely a hypocrite if I work to coordinate the city’s Active Transportation Plan if it is not a concept I apply to myself. To be a long-range planner, current planner or building inspector/permit technician we need to practice what we preach – we too need to be sustainable and well-built. Like our jobs, this is a complex task and is not the easy choice. However, it is not impossible and like the Pandemic Toolkit that I have attached with this essay indicates, we can take do-able intervention measures in our own lives as well as the lives of our cities.

My action step is to join a local gym and go there to workout at least one day a week. I was able to do this in the past at an employer that subsidized gym memberships (it was free, basically, if one worked out at least eight times a month), so I know that I am capable of doing it. For others, maybe an intervention consists of using the stairs once a day or once a week. Maybe it consists of walking or biking to work once a week, and working with your employer to have a less formal dress code on occasion as well as the ability to bring your bicycle into your office or other secure location.

In a spirit of love and encouragement, I challenge myself, you and our cities to take some interventions for our collective health and long-term sustainability. Consider people like the professional quarterback, Tom Brady and the former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as athletic role models who embrace a healthy lifestyle over the long-term. Exercise and healthy living are not (and were not) a “one-off” for these people; otherwise they would not be successful. Our cities and us as individuals can also be healthier and more sustainable by starting with a few small steps forward.

“Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worry on the doorstep, just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street”, as the song On the Sunny Side of the Street invites us to do. “Can’t you hear a pitter pat, and a happy tune is your step, life can be so sweet, on the sunny side of the street”. Refuse to “walk in the shade, with those blues on parade” and take some small steps to a healthier you, so you can create the city and world that you and others want to live in.