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My thoughts exactly and we have been here for a little more than 40 years. Sometimes it is good not to take yourself too seriously. We can do good every day without needing to be important. I'm going to have to come back and read this whole thread when it is not way past my bedtime. I am up doing laundry from a five day trip to see our granddaughter graduate from college.
What a good reason to have a mountain of clothes.
I'll bet you gathered great joy from watching your new graduate.. proud and humbling at the same time.
"Not to take yourself too seriously".. yes, forgiving ourselves, easing up, even laughing at ourselves
thanks NCN!! A refreshing post!
Good points. Feeling like you aren't in the right geographical place does not amount to feeling like you're vanishing. Something else must be going on with OP.
Maybe just a tender moment of reflection / or the beginning of stirring the pot of adventure within
to the catapult point.
So when I say stillness, I mean to STOP speeding along.
Make the next thing an intentional moment when we did live less harried.
.........
We cannot disappear if we live with slow intention in the present moment.
.......
I think there needs to be a balance in life. There should be times when we are still and contemplative and recover and regroup. I find being in nature is most conducive to this.
There should also be times when we are active. When we are planning, doing and accomplishing. When we are learning and experiencing new things.
It seems to me a lot of people are good at doing nothing. Fewer make the efforts needed to go beyond drifting through life. As we age I think fewer and fewer make the efforts. That is exactly what I would call slowly disappearing.
Just want to let those who moved know that even if you had stayed where you worked, you probably wouldn't have the same friends when you retire. I have a whole new group of friends from my water exercise class that come from many different states and a few from different countries. I have become more attached to them than our church friends because we meet three times a week. Retirement is a whole new life but I do run into people I saw when I worked. The difficult thing is remembering where I knew them and trying not to hurt their feelings by not remembering them.
Wouldn't have the same friends and unless an extreme example of a place suffering population decline / economic stagnation, the place itself would have changed .... a lot!
You are not looking over your shoulder at what was,
but at what is now.
We cannot disappear if we live with slow intention in the present moment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FeelinLow
A person can find peace and purpose in just about any geographical setting, so geography is just frosting on the cake. Yeah, I'd love to live on the beach, but this morning I found joy and delight in watching robins at my feeder. The best cure for angst that I know is to quit focusing on what we don't have and on our past. Focus on the present and the positives in your life and you will find contentent.
So many differing viewpoints!
I suppose I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I choose a place that reminds me very much of where I grew up. I feel like I carry my past with me wherever I go. Small things like going to the lake and closing my eyes and listening to the sounds of children playing, the smell of suntan oil, the feel of the sand under my toes, it's my past in my present, it's comforting to me. It grounds me and keeps me from disappearing.
I left my hometown at 18 for college and careers, then returned at 62 for retirement.
So I felt like a stranger in an old man's body revisiting my teenage haunts, but it's getting better all the time.
I think I knew as a kid that I would grow old here, and I loved feeling my 4 decades away were temporary.
And I feel that I have a second adopted city that I left a thousand miles away, and it's worth visiting.
Some people just have a hard time moving away. They don't want change. They get "homesick". When I was a young person I went away to college, several thousand miles away, and in effect started a new life. My wife and I have done that numerous times. Each time is a new adventure with new opportunities and new experiences.
If you do not have an adventurous spirit and new adventures and new opportunities are not appealing maybe you should move back to your "roots". Don't be surprised it that turns out different than you expect also. Most of us find we cannot live in the past even if we might want to.
Nice way to put it. When I visit home, I always wonder why I left in the beginning of the trip, and am always happy to return to my present home at the end of the trip. Now I view it as a vacation. I revisit the honeymoon phase often and then return back to reality.
The old friends, always fun for a catch-up session, don't necessarily equate to the friends you left or how you remember things. Families grows up and older, and they've all learned to live their lives quite fine. Cultural values may still be similar, but you'll be moving to yet a new area, one that just looks like the old one you left. Finally, if you're married, then whose dream are you chasing?
I do miss the home I've built up in my mind. But I forget the stuff I hated and remember the stuff I loved a little too easily. That home doesn't exist, and maybe never did. It's the perpetual twist of fate. People back home with some anxiety on how they never left and feel naive about the world. People who left frustrated about how things are where they are.
I do miss the home I've built up in my mind. But I forget the stuff I hated and remember the stuff I loved a little too easily. That home doesn't exist, and maybe never did. It's the perpetual twist of fate. People back home with some anxiety on how they never left and feel naive about the world. People who left frustrated about how things are where they are.
Make today beautiful, wherever you are.
Spoken with the natural flow of eloquence.
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