downtown dreaming
Posted on 13. Aug, 2010 by Carrie in lifestyle
words > KACY CRIDER
The next time you hear people say that Wichita has no culture, give them the look of death as if they had just insulted your family, because that’s what has just happened. The next time you hear someone say they’re bored, tell them to stop being boring—demand they do something about it. The next time you find yourself refreshing your inbox, remind yourself of the meaning behind killing time. The curse of youth is impatience. The curse of experience is becoming comfortable. Everything has room for improvement.
What did you want before you knew about credit reports and income brackets? Before self-doubt and the realization that it’s embarrassing to laugh loudly? You live in a town without precedents, for heaven’s sake. Your rent is cheap. You have as much time for your dreams as you make. Your government is accessible. You are strong if you choose to be. You can do anything.
I know an ex-waitress who shoved her tip-outs into an envelope under her stove for five years in order to fulfill her dream of opening a shop full of beautiful things. A divorcee I also know went to fifteen banks before one approved his loan for to open a high-risk café. There is an executive’s assistant who sacks away most of her 401K into an IRA for her son’s dreams. She lives with her in-laws and prays daily that her situation will change—that she will one day have a restaurant tucked under a cover in the San Francisco Bay area, and that the window frames will display (at the right time, angle, and light) an orange glow on all of the flat ware and serving trays.
This last dream, like many, will stutter because of the actually embarrassing realization of fear and procrastination: Fear of pushing through the arithmetic to make the formula for your own happiness. What is it that you really want? You could either be the twenty-something complainer behind me with the potential he’s killing by letting himself be bored, or you could be the kid in the kitchen with the sunglasses who spends his lunch breaks pricing real estate for his future furniture store.
Half-hearted attempts at greatness cause failure, but a city filled with people willing to persevere until that excellence is met will not fail. What are we waiting for? Let’s get busy and build a downtown with parks and parking, with a centralized grid of good ideas lining the streets. If we’re willing to work as much as some of us complain, this will be a piece of cake. And worth every calorie.
