3rd Place
Totally unlike Main Street, the shopping mall is populated by strangers. As people circulate about in the constant, monotonous flow of mall pedestrian traffic, their eyes do not cast about for familiar faces, for the chance of seeing one is small. That is not part of what one expects there. The reason is simple. The mall is centrally located to serve the multitudes from a number of outlying developments within its region. There is little acquaintance between these developments and not much more within them. Most of them lack focal points or core settings and, as a result, people are not widely known to one another, even in their own neighborhoods, and their neighborhood is only a minority portion of the mall’s clientele.”
Ray remembered the days of corner stores and so do I. Even though Ray Oldenburg has passed away many years ago his words still live in me. I remember when parents were not afraid to send their children alone to the store. I remember when kids could bike up and down the street and that all the neighbors would watch out for each other's kids. Now we live in a time where we fear when we cannot see our kids. We feel our hearts jump out of our throat when our child is out of our eyesight. We have lost our community connection. We no longer watch out for one another. We no longer sit on our neighbor’s stoop and enjoy relaxing and talking while watching our kids bike.
Community, as a whole, has vanished. We are in our phones, we are in our lives and we seem to be all missing the bigger picture. Without a thread of connection, without the corner store, the barber shop, the local deli, we go in and out and never connect with another human being. In this day in age, we want instant everything, but connections take time and effort and we all seem to rush through our lives and miss the connection altogether.
We are strangers all bustling about. We have our own lives and cannot be bothered asking, really asking, how the other person is. Our time is precious but so are relationships with each other. If we continue the way we are going, society will be so fragmented that the people will suffer. The human spirit is made to be connected to others. We are happier with others, we get out more with others, we feel a purpose with others, but soon all of that will go away if we continue this way.
Ray had this idea, and I agree, that we all need a third place outside of work and home where we can connect with others, we can meet with likeminded people, we can feel free to be ourselves and relax. It allows us to be a well-rounded person. It allows us to be ourselves without judgment. Ray may be gone from this earth, but I hope more people realize the importance of third places and join together more like a community instead of a disjointed society where no one cares about anyone else, they only care about what they can get right now.
