During Thursday night’s special called meeting of the Selma City Council, in which local leaders approved a contract for an interim police chief and allocated money for landfill needs, Selma City Councilman John Leashore gave council members a rundown of two bills making their way through the Houses of Government in Washington aimed at funding rural infrastructure projects.

Not surprisingly, the bills are stamped with the names of two Alabama lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-AL, and U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, D-AL, both of which have fought tirelessly, in one way or another, for the needs of Alabamians.

Sewell’s bipartisan legislation, reported on earlier in the week, would increase the annual limit for municipal bank qualified bond borrowing from $10 million to $30 million, expanding access to low-cost capital for municipalities and non-profit organizations; Jones’ contribution, a provision included in a bill called America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act, would open the door to some $4 billion to improve roads, bridges and evacuation routes in small and rural communities.

During his comments, Leashore implored his colleagues to keep an eye on the national ball and remain vigilant for opportunities to address the city’s aging and crumbling infrastructure, as there seems to be little appetite for raising taxes on the city’s citizens.

Even in a divided Congress, the bills have bipartisan support and address seemingly non-controversial issues, giving both a better-than-fair chance of clearing their respective chambers, but the importance of Leashore’s comments struck a different note as well – Selma does not exist in a vacuum and it is incumbent upon the vigilant and inquisitive minds of this city, and all of those that surround it, to pay heed to the shifting tides across the state and nation.

The reality that we have hyper-localized and partitioned our interactions, and thereby limited the scope of our knowledge and decision-making abilities, in an age where connectivity to the wider world is literally a keystroke away, is indeed a conundrum, but it is a fact all the same – few can speak with authority on the goings-on at the statehouse in Montgomery, much less the ins and outs of Washington discord or the ebbs and flows of nations beyond our shores.

That being the case, it’s inspiring to see one of our local leaders paying heed to the machinations of congressional lawmaking and seeing clearly the profound impact that those movements, as well as all of the others currently being devised and debated in Washington, have on a small town in Alabama.

Indeed, we are but a microcosm of our state, which is a microcosm of our nation, which is a microcosm of our world and the societies, civilizations and cultures we’ve built within them, so that ignoring the rumblings in distant lands is an act of intellectual negligence with the potential to further erode our collective minds.

Certainly, this is a grandiose way to look at a city council member’s support for legislation proposed by national leaders representing the state, but, at least in an existential sense, it shows the potential that we all have for growth if we but keep our eyes on the waves that batter distant shores, the ideas that spring from distant throats and the insight that explodes from distant minds.