Now you've woken the philosophical rambling dragon, siiiigh.
And now YOUR dragon has woken MINE - and I
just put him down after his warm bottle and story, too!
Well, now you're going to have to deal with him.
It's hard to pin a reason why people get attached to places. Some because they've never been anywhere else, (some because they want to be anywhere else), and sometimes there's just no explaining it.
I think that's the main principle involved here. The Tao is mysterious and we usually cannot understand or explain it; we just flow along with it.
It's more than a comfort zone thing I think. An uncle, born an Aussie country boy, was 'city' to his boot soles. He saw hardly any of Australia but in his later, better off years, he and his wife spent a couple of months every year for over a decade touring every US State except Alaska, and visiting friends they'd made in the States. (They visited with him when they fled their winter, it was a great deal they all had going.
)
He 'belonged' in America, he was just born on the wrong side of the world.
His brother was as old school Aussie bushman as they come. The city was Hell personified to him, and the only thing that interested him about America were John Deere tractors, so it seems nothing to do with genetics, nurture or birthplace.
Interesting story. I agree that it's a VERY individual thing, and even in a single person it can change over the years.
I've always had this weird 'homesickness' for the Kimberley Coast, a place I've never been! I 'belong' in the Top End. Although I have only ever spent a few weeks in the Northern Territory, I felt 'at home' there. It has the lifestyle, landscape, climate and characters that most appeal to me, but I wasn't physically, or financially, ever suited to living there. I have no idea why a city girl would want to live in the desert at the end of the earth but there you go.
And they tell me that occult phenomenon is impossible ...
Guess I just like the wild (warm) empty places.
You'd love my bedroom then ...
Where I live now is where I decided to retire to when I was about 12. I didn't know a single soul here, still don't know all that many and it's hours away from relatives. It was always just 'my' spot.
It was only ever a holiday destination, one of many, but it was the nearest other place I ever felt I was supposed to be. It just clicked. Still does. It felt 'familiar'. I lived elsewhere, in a small town for a while before here, but never once returned to the city or the house I was raised and lived in for over 50 years. I haven't seen Sydney since the day I left it in 2002. I liked the Sydney scenery okay, but I was never a 'city' girl and was never really 'at home' there.
I was born and raised on the outskirts of NYC, then moved into the city for 7 years. I felt more alive during those 7 years than in any other time since. Could it be because I was a tadpole swimming in a massive, colorful ocean? That I was having my first taste of independent living? That I was fully alive, fully living and fully occupied (going to college, running my business and playing the pimp)? That everything was available 24/7? That I met a weird and wonderful (and truth be known, sometimes nasty) mix of people?
I don't know. I DO know that they say that when you're born a New Yorker you're always a New Yorker. Maybe this is what they mean.
Would I want to move back there again? Hell no! At least, not without winning the lottery first. But everything has changed - it's no longer the magical '70's. The Twin Towers are gone. The Pink Pussycat Boutique has gone tourist. Studio 54 is no longer, and Plato's Retreat is just a dim and distant memory.
Plus the street-vendor hot dogs are
terrible now, even at $5 a pop.
Since then I've lived in California, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and, since 1987, Pennsylvania. I came here because my wife had relatives here and we were taking care of them. Fourteen years later we divorced and inertia just seemed to take over - I'm still here 12 years later. And here's a secret for you (don't tell anyone!) -
I don't
like Pennsylvania very much.
Oh, it's your typical Commonwealth (technically it isn't a State), but the area I've been in has been on the decline for the past 50 years and shows no signs of improving. Sure, they're building new Wal-Marts here left and right, but to me that's like dressing a dead fish in mink, if you can somehow envision Wal-Mart as being made of mink. We've been getting the outflow of gangsters, drug dealers and lifelong welfare recipients from New York, Philadelphia and New Jersey for over 20 years now and they've pretty much taken over large parts of the town. Crime has gone up, property values have gone down.
Everywhere I've ever lived where I had a martial arts school and/or Chinese medicine clinic - California, New York and Florida - I've been successful. I'm still living off the money I made from those places 15 years later.
But here? My schools were a failure. The people here just were not interested. They saw me as a scammer or, worse, the Devil.
The young kids here flee as soon as they come of age. They know the job market here is atrocious. Some even stay long enough to graduate from one of the local colleges, but then they take a job offer somewhere else.
Now Florida for me is, for whatever reason, Mecca. Again, I don't know if it's because I had some of my happiest times there and I'm now looking at it through rose-tinted time-traveling granny glasses or whether it is truly calling to me. I know in my rational mind that beside the ocean, palm trees, hurricanes and insane alligators there's little that's there for me that isn't here, but my emotional mind - my heart - tells me I'm supposed to be there.
The Kooris (aboriginals) have a deep need of "country". It's more than territory to them, it's more than where they're born, it's a kind of spiritual attachment to a particular tract of the planet. They see their bit of "country" and everything in it as their kin, they are born of it not on it. It owns them, not they it. It's a living entity to them, every bit as close and familiar as their relatives.
I have to admit that I wrote that off as bs to claim compensation and mining royalty money, as most of us do, and sometimes for good reason, but eventually did understand it a little. A kind of epiphany I had in the NT. It's not patriotism by any stretch, or 'ownership' issues, it's a 'belonging' thing.
It's "funny" (not really) that many of the old-school Native Americans felt exactly the same way. Perhaps we missed our chance at learning something valuable from them ...
We can't all live where we belong. Or even where we think we should belong. Our fantasy Paradise often falls far short when we find it. If the feeling of belonging isn't there then it's just scenery. You can watch a video for that.
We CAN live where we DO belong, though - at least, that's MY goal. I don't have money, I don't have material things, I don't have attachments, so I might as well follow my Way, wherever it takes me.
My sympathy Phil, my dad was like you, always trying to find where he was supposed to be, and never feeling 'at home.'
But prepare yourself, he never found that place. He did have a hell of a good time and covered a lot of ground searching for it though.
They say it's the journey, not the destination, I know. MY problem is that I feel I've been standing lock-legged on the same part of the Path for over 25 years now. Vines are crawling up me and small furry mammals piddle upon me. I can affirm that bears do indeed defecate in the woods.
But I'm NOT on my journey anymore. I'm in that
Twilight Zone diner that William Shatner was in, and I haven't been given permission yet to leave.
)
Guess I just like the wild (warm) empty places.
