Moving On

What do you do when you've outgrown something as fundamental as home?

I have lived in the same small town all my life. I was born here, raised here, thought I'd die here. And, for years, that was enough.  Nowadays, I'm not so sure.

 It brings to mind a Rascal Flatts song:
"I've lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they're always the same
They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it
They'll never allow me to change
But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong
I'm movin' on

I'm movin' on
At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me
And I know there's no guarantees, but I'm not alone
There comes a time in everyone's life
When all you can see are the years passing by
And I have made up my mind that those days are gone
I'm moving on."

Sometimes, this place feels like a too-tight shirt -- you just can't move, can't breathe. 

I love my family. I have a reverence for who and what I've come from. There are bittersweet memories about this place that I'll cherish forever. I love the mountains. There's a solace in being surrounded by them. I love that when my nerves feel jarred and exposed, I can drive in any direction and wind up on some mountaintop, amid the breeze and trees and earthy smells of dying and growing. There's a peace, a continuity that I need to feel. I suppose that's Whitman's influence. Alack and bedamned, those Transcendentalists!! 

I love to stand on a rock or overlook and gaze down at the common-place trivialities of life carrying on below me. There's a comfort & freedom in the reminder that I'm a very small part of the universe. Sometimes we give ourselves too much weight, too much importance; it's lovely, on these days when our self-importance feels so heavy, to be brought back to our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. At the same time, there's the paradox of our impact upon everything we touch.

These are the thoughts I ponder, standing on my mountains.

As much as I treasure this, lately, it feels as though there's something more, something different and new. There was a time, not too far off, that "new" was a dirty word to me.  Change was something to be avoided at all costs. The known, no matter how ill-fitting it might be to my heart and self, was better than that terrifying, dark abyss of the "not-known".

That's not true, anymore. These days I have a yearning for something.  I don't know what it is, yet. But I know it's out there......waiting. There's a heaviness in the air that tells me the winds of change are blowing. I'm breathing it in, pulling it deep.

I could ponder the inter-connectedness of the universe, God's amazing grace, the collective unconsciousness, and how very beautifully small I really am at the seashore just as well as here.

It comes to me, just now, Home is inside us. We carry it everywhere we go. Our roots ground us in the sandy soil or black fertile loam just as well as in this rusty red clay of my childhood.  And so, if home seems to be a too-tight shirt, it's just the circumstances -- not the life.

It may be time for a trip up the mountain.