I'm just mopping up the floor and wiping off the counters, getting ready for the morning crowd.
Can I get you a cup of cocoa? Tea? Chai? Coffee? A shot of whiskey? Several shots of whiskey?
Relax..let's have some caffeine and nicotine or chew on some betal nut and talk.
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A friend of mine will return to Vietnam this summer.
I can tell she is very happy.
Happy to be going to a place with connections; to the land, the weather, the foods, the smells, the sights...a sense of place.
We can assimilate into a place but there is always a sense of not being from "this place."
I've lived in Washington state for over 20 years but I'll never have the sense that this is my place.
I would hypothesize that, (a) Connections to a place are formed at an early age. and (b) The time in our development, when we are most able to learn languages (0-5 years), is also the time are brains are wired to learn the "language" of a place.
When I went back to Montana for a week long retreat last Spring I had the feeling of being in my place. I wasn't in my birthplace or in a town I'd ever spent much time in, but the general feeling I had was that I was in some sense home. It felt really good.
I can imagine my Grandfather being in the dry Montana prairies and thinking about the mountainous water rich place he had left in Norway. To go from the fjords to the prairie, not knowing the language, not knowing the people, not having money or a job, took a lot of character and courage. I have a great deal of respect for anyone with the character and courage to be an immigrant. My moving around the United States pales in comparison.
Still I can't trivialize my connection to rivers, mountains, open spaces, smells, animals and all the things that make up my sense of a place.
Not sure if it's obvious but I have not included people in my sense of place. I don't want to confuse "sense of place" with "home".
One way of looking at home (aside from the sense of place - the physical environment) would be to think of home as the place where people love you. This would help to explain how people can be happy wherever they are physically located. It would help explain how people can be happy, but it wouldn't be sufficient, since having people love you is not as important as loving who you are (but I digress).
I love the Pacific Northwest. It's just not my place in some sense of the word. That's okay I don't mind being an outsider.
I always have to laugh a little when I see one of those bumper stickers that says "Colorado Native" or "Montana Native" or whatever place the car owner is from. To have a feeling of pride, or some sense of superiority, because by accident of birth, and whatever accidents of fate happened to leave you in the place you were born, seems funny and a little sad. I was born here and I never left. Okay...but then what?
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Those words come from a book called "This Place on Earth" by Alan Thein Durning.
Here's a piece from an interview with Alan Thein Durning by Globalhunger.org where he mentions the origination of that story,
Q:You shifted your home from Washington, D.C. to Seattle, and changed your whole career because a woman in the Philippines said to you: "Tell me about your place." Why did that remark change your life?
"A:Starting in 1986, I worked as a researcher at the Worldwatch Institute. Based in Washington, D.C., I travelled the world, documenting injustices and highlighting successful strategies for sustainable development.
This had, I suppose, been a lifelong ambition. I come from a line that reveres wanderers. My family has moved to a new place with each generation, and sometimes with each decade. In this way, we have been typical Americans. We have been migratory, pursuing profit, knowledge, and ideals always to new locales.
But then, a few years ago, I was in the Philippines, interviewing members of indigenous tribes about their land and livelihood. I saw ancestral farms and forests that these tribes insisted they would defend with their lives. Late one day, a barefoot old woman who was revered by the others as a traditional priestess, said to me. "Tell me about your place. What is your homeland like?" I was speechless. I had no idea what to say. Should I tell her about one of various neighborhoods where I'd had an apartment in and near Washington, D.C.? Neighborhoods where I didn't know my neighborhoods and felt no connections? In the end, I admitted "In America, we have careers, not places." She looked at me with pity in her eyes, and it ruined me for the life of a globe-trotting eco-evangelist.
A year later, after failed attempts to shake the burn of her pity, I quit my job and moved my family back to the city where I grew up."
From an interview with Alan Thein Durning.
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So to sum up -
Wherever you go can be home as long as you are with people who love you.
No need to despair if you are alone though, since even without loving family and friends you can make a happy home (be happy wherever you are) if you consider all the reasons to love yourself. It's hard but that's good. Being self-critical is not a bad thing in my book, as long as you give yourself a break every so often to be thankful for what a marvelous creation you are.
Learn to love, or at least appreciate, your place. Maybe think about how you define that place - your birth place, your home town, your city, county, country, your planet.
The phrase wherever you go...reminds me of a bumper sticker I like that says, "Wherever You Go There You Are."
That's right. Wherever you go, you will be there. That might sound like a joke or just silly, but think about it for a moment.
It's not where you go, or what you experience from the outside, it's what is inside you that matters.
Change comes from the inside, we work from the inside out. If we want to be specific; happiness comes from the inside...not from a vacation or a place or things; or dare I say it - even other people. It comes from within.
That phrase, "Wherever You Go There You Are" is also the title of a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
I'd like to read it sometime.
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On a humourous note..
I saw a clip from Blazing Saddles a couple of days ago that I'd forgot all about. Mel Brooks is the governor holding a meeting. He starts to play with, and then give people sitting at the table with him, paddle balls. It looked really funny. I think I'll see if I can get that movie this weekend.
This is the IMBD.com Quote from Blazing Saddles (1974) -
Hedley Lamarr: Meeting adjourned. Oh, I am sorry sir I didn't mean to overstep my bounds, you say that.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: What?
Hedley Lamarr: Meeting is adjourned.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: It is?
Hedley Lamarr: No, you say that governor.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: What?
Hedley Lamarr: Meeting is adjourned.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: It is?
Hedley Lamarr: Here sir, play with this.
[Hands the governor a rubber ball and paddle set]
The Mel Brooks clip was on as a promo for the new movie "Robots".
Sometimes I think the world has gone completely mad, and then I think, "Ah, who cares?" And then I think, "Hey, what's for supper?"
From SNL Archives | Deep Thoughts
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At the risk of sounding a little like Pollyanna or Stuart Smalley I will say -
Take good care of yourself because by golly you are good enough, and smart enough and people like you.
Wishing you a wonderful or wonder filled or just a nice relaxing (or exciting if you like)....
Weekend..
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