It seems like only yesterday that I sat across the table from our mayor at La Place Rendez Vous.
What was most memorable wasn’t the beauty of the newly thawed Rainy Lake, nor the 7-Up with grenadine and French fries with barbecue sauce (old habits die hard). It was the conversation—two minds discussing and wrestling with the concept of a citizen.
“What exactly does a citizen mean today? And how does one be a good citizen?”
After our visit, the words “citizen of the world” remained visible in my home for me to see each morning.
To ponder. To reflect. To imagine. To be.
Literature from Aristotle (citizenship as active participation), Alexis de Tocqueville (civic engagement as democratic infrastructure), Hannah Arendt (action as the essence of civic life) and Viktor Frankl (responsibility as the path to meaning) helped navigate this around this concept.
I’m not sure if I even fully grasp what it means today, but after a year of reflection, the word citizen no longer feels administrative. It no longer sounds like a box to be checked on a form, a status conferred by documents or a label assigned at birth.
It feels alive.
It feels earned.
At its best, it feels like a practice.
A citizen is not simply someone who resides somewhere. A resident occupies space. A citizen occupies responsibility.
To be a citizen is to stand in relationship. To place. To people. To a past you did not choose. To a future you will not fully see.
It is to accept that your life is threaded into a larger fabric.
That your actions (however small) tug at its woven totality.
This is what makes citizenship special.
It is not passive belonging, but active participation in a shared story.
It asks something of us.
And because it asks something, it gives something back: dignity, agency, meaning.
Citizenship, at its best, requires four disciplines: attention, purpose, participation and moral independence.
At its best, citizenship begins with being informed. Not informed in the shallow sense of having opinions ready at hand, but in the deeper sense. Of paying attention. Listening long enough to be unsettled. Reading beyond the headline. Questioning beyond the slogan. And resisting the comfort of certainty when reality is complex.
An informed citizen understands that knowledge is not sharpened ammunition. Rather, it is tempered illumination.
The goal is not to win arguments. Rather, it is to see more clearly (especially where one’s own vision is incomplete).
This kind of attention is an act of care.
It says: “This matters enough for me to learn.”
From knowledge grows purpose. Purpose is the quiet conviction that one’s presence is not accidental. A purposeful citizen asks not only “What do I want?” but “What is needed of me here?”
This doesn’t require grand gestures. Purpose can be modest. Local.
It can be voting. Mentoring a learner. Speaking up in a meeting. Refusing to turn away from injustice. Choosing honesty when silence would be easier.
Purpose anchors us.
It turns civic life from noise into direction, from reaction into intention.
It reminds us that citizenship is not about being right all the time, but about being responsible over time.
When acted upon, purpose becomes activity.
An active citizen understands that democracy is not a performance to be watched but a muscle to be used. Rights unused grow brittle. Institutions unattended decay. Freedom, like any living thing, requires movement.
Activity does not mean constant outrage or exhaustion. It means participation that is steady, human, and sustainable. It means showing up not just when you are angry, but when you are needed. It means engaging even when the results are uncertain, because disengagement guarantees only one outcome: decline.
Regardless of all the emphasis on the collective, citizenship does not dissolve the individual.
This is crucial.
One of its greatest strengths is that it insists on individuality.
A citizen is not a follower. Not a crowd. Not a demographic.
A citizen thinks for themselves. Votes their conscience. Speaks in their own voice.
This individuality is not selfishness. It is moral independence.
It is what prevents citizenship from becoming conformity.
When individuals bring their full selves -shaped by different experiences, values, insights, and epiphanies – the collective becomes wiser.
More resilient.
More real.
The informed, purposeful, active, individual citizen brings out the best of us because citizenship asks us to grow.
It stretches our empathy, disciplines our attention, and invites us to care beyond our immediate lives.
In doing so, it refines character as much as it strengthens institutions.
So, what does this mean today?
It means citizenship matters precisely when it feels fragile.
When trust is thin, noise overwhelms nuance and in turn, cynicism pretends to be sophistication.
In such moments, citizenship is not naïve. It is necessary.
To be a citizen today is to resist the temptation to retreat – either into private comfort or tribal certainty.
It is to believe that shared life is worth the effort and time it demands.
That disagreement need not become dehumanization. That imperfect systems are still shaped by the hands that engage them.
Citizenship, ultimately, is an act of hope.
Not the loud hope of slogans, but the durable hope of commitment.
It says, “I am not alone and I am not powerless.”
“I belong here and therefore I am responsible here.”
After a year of reflection, this is what remains with me: a citizen is someone who chooses, again and again, to take part in the unfinished work of living together. Not because it is easy. Not because it guarantees victory. But because it is how we become—together—something better than we are alone.
Robert Horton is an educator, author, orator, and linguist. He is a member of Rainy River First Nations.
