Average Joes and Josies are the Ones Who Really Matter

Your eyes can’t help but be drawn to the glossy magazines plastered at eye level at the grocery store. Brad and Angelina are engaged?! Tom and Katie are divorcing?! Some Kardashian is pregnant, divorcing, dating, or feuding?! The faces are symmetrical, the bodies are slim, the money is flowing, and the drama is simply too juicy to resist. It’s a diversion from our mundane lives, which are filled with much of precisely the same drama, sans celebrity status.

But what really makes the world go round are the regular, average, imperfect people who work hard every day at un-glamorous jobs, and come home to un-glamorous families. We may not look like Barack and Michelle Obama, but we mother our children with just as fierce a love as they undoubtedly have for Malia and Sasha. We may not weekend in the Hamptons, but we chance the weather for a weekend at the beach, and our kids are thrilled with their s’mores and sleeping bags. At times we yell at our kids, or get into too much debt, or gain a few pounds, and thank goodness it isn’t posted on Perez Hilton. We forgive and accept forgiveness and put things back together, without a media circus to document it all.

Great communities are built by great people–a great not defined by BMI or net worth, but by hard work, accountability, love, and a whole lotta summertime s’mores.