Time & Perspective Quote by David Selby

Selby’s line reads like a folksy sociological footnote, but it’s doing bigger work: it turns geography into destiny, and destiny into virtue. By pinning West Virginia’s family-centered culture on the practical hardships of mountain travel, he gives the state a grounded origin story that sidesteps the usual stereotypes outsiders drag in. The implication is: closeness wasn’t merely sentimental; it was infrastructural. When the road is the problem, the solution is people.

The intent feels gently defensive, in the best way. Selby isn’t romanticizing family as an abstract ideal; he’s legitimizing it as a survival strategy that became a tradition. That framing matters because West Virginia so often gets narrated through extraction, poverty, or political shorthand. He offers a counter-narrative built from environment and endurance, suggesting that loyalty and mutual reliance are not quaint regional quirks but the residue of necessity.

There’s subtext, too, about what’s been lost. “In the past” nods to modern mobility without spelling out its consequences: if you can leave easily, you might. The statement carries a faint warning that the conditions that once forced interdependence have changed, while the emotional expectation of closeness may remain. It’s also an actor’s kind of truth-telling: simple, scene-setting, character-driven. The mountains aren’t just backdrop; they’re the unseen antagonist that shaped the relationships, the pacing of life, and the moral economy of “we take care of our own.”