People have an odd way of measuring change.
They think a town changes the day the bulldozers arrive. The day construction fences go up. The day the ribbon gets cut. The day the first family moves into the new subdivision. In other words, they think the visible event is the beginning of the story.
It isn’t.
The beginning happened months ago. Sometimes years ago.
I was reminded of that a few days ago while driving past a field I’ve seen countless times. There was nothing remarkable about it. Just grass, a few trees and enough empty space to make you forget the world was changing at all. Except this time there were survey stakes in the ground.
Tiny things.
Easy to miss.
Most people probably did.
But those little wooden stakes told a very different story. The field was still there. The grass hadn’t gone anywhere. The trees were standing exactly where they’d always stood. Yet the future had already arrived. Whatever eventually occupies that land—a road, a warehouse, a subdivision, a coffee shop or something nobody has imagined yet—already exists in somebody’s plans.
The cows just don’t know it yet.
That’s how cities grow.
Not with bulldozers.
With conversations.
With permits.
With engineering drawings.
With financing.
With zoning meetings that almost nobody attends.
By the time the bulldozers arrive, they’re simply announcing a decision that was made long before the rest of us noticed. The future is funny like that. It never sneaks up on us. It patiently waits for us to look in the wrong direction.
Lebanon is standing at one of those moments.
Over the next several years we’ll see new businesses, new roads, new homes and new faces. Some people will celebrate every announcement. Others will complain about every announcement. Most people will ignore all of it until traffic gets worse, the skyline changes or they discover the empty field they drove past for twenty years is suddenly an industrial park.
Then they’ll ask the question everybody asks.
“When did all this happen?”
The honest answer is: while you were busy living your life.
There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. Most people have jobs to work, children to raise and bills to pay. They can’t spend Tuesday evenings reading planning documents or sitting through zoning meetings.
But somebody should.
That’s why I started Building Lebanon.
Not to cheerlead every project. Not to oppose every project. And certainly not because the world needs another website. I started it because every growing city deserves people willing to pay attention before the concrete is poured. The most important chapter in any building isn’t the construction. It’s the decision to build.
Some people think all of this has nothing to do with them.
I think they’re mistaken.
Whether you rent or own, whether you arrived last week or your family has lived here for generations, you’re participating in what Lebanon becomes. You influence it by where you spend your money, who you elect, what you support, what you oppose and, occasionally, by what you choose to ignore.
Indifference doesn’t exempt us from the future.
It merely guarantees we’ll meet it as strangers.
Whether you’re paying attention or not, you’re helping build Lebanon.
You might as well know what you’re building.
— Ju
A Final Note
the future doesn’t need your permission.
It merely guarantees you’ll meet it.
Whether you meet it as an informed citizen or a surprised bystander is entirely up to you.
Whether you’re paying attention or not, you’re helping build Lebanon.
You might as well know what you’re building.
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
— Winston Churchill