In another world, I fled South Bend, left the shadow of The Dome and the stifling whispers of dreams suffocated. Like Homer, setting out for my Odyssey, I aimed for distant horizons, chasing a dream concocted in the twisted crucible of my mind. The day of departure was an anxious departure, a fevered hallucination of escape, and once I finally broke free, I damn sure never cast a backward glance. Probably Chicago or some other neon-soaked behemoth beckoned with illusions of grandeur, promising a wild ride through the pulsating veins of a modern, sprawling metropolis.
But, dear reader, this is no fantasy realm where I languish in the desires to scrape the sky at rooftop parties with the socialites. No, this is the palpable, gritty reality of a town often dismissed as a mere dot on the map, a town called South Bend. Here, we can't surrender our dreams to the relentless flow of some insipid predetermined purpose. Nay, I dug my heels into the asphalt and decided to shape this community into something worth seeing with people worth doing it with.
In the belly of the beast, where the sounds of the city play a guttural tune for the dreamers, I opted not for surrender but for insurgency. Against the backdrop of farms and the cadence of progress, I uncovered a peculiar truth - it's not about the size of the pond but the audacity of the damn fish in it. In the late-night conversations with the dreamers and the hum of potential energy untapped, I discovered a canvas waiting for chaotic brushstrokes to paint a vision only the wildest minds could comprehend.
South Bend is our canvas, and every stroke of defiance added color to the mural of resilience painted with the pains & traumas of those who refused to be confined by provincial norms. We don't merely water the roots; we drown them in the intoxicating elixir of hope. Our purpose can't be found in the glow of city lights but in the raw, unfiltered glow of community forged through shared struggle and galvanized in the heat of ascension.
I learned that impact isn't measured by the skyscrapers you touch but by the souls you stir. The size of the pond is inconsequential; it's the ferocity of the ripples we create that resonates beyond the borders. South Bend isn't just a blip on the map; it's a state of mind, a challenge to conventional thinking, a testament that the most beautiful things can sprout from the most unlikely of places.
Every day that I am at The Rocki Button, I remember that South Bend leads me to all the places I want to go; it is an open crossroad. A road less traveled, where the misfits and rebels can carve out their own impact that reverberates through time, questioning the very essence of what it means to make waves in a world that often dismisses us as smaller ponds. Here, we are not just fish or crabs in a barrel; we are the pioneers of possibility, the scribes of our stories, and the architects of our surroundings. Our actions are etched into the DNA of a town that dares to dream differently.
#BUILDTHEBEND
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