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I've lived in the same general area my entire life (including a several stints in both rural and city settings) and I've traveled a fair bit both domestically and internationally. FWIW, my entire family (except for 2 cousins) have lived in the same county for their entire lives.
I've noticed recently that I'm getting an "itch"; I've realized that I don't want to keep living where I am, but I haven't yet found the place that truly feels like my home. I always enjoy my visits to other locales, but none of them ever seem to make me want to stay.
I'd love to move sometime within the next 2 years or so, but I have no idea where I want to go. I feel a strong urger to get out and live somewhere else, start something fresh... I feel as though I get a little more solidified here, a little more content, and a little closer to the status quo with each passing year.
Has anyone else struggled to find their true home? How many of you—even after many years—are still struggling to find your home?
Striking out toward the far horizon is something humans do. If we weren't a restless species, we would not be inhabiting the entire planet.
Is it possible that you only want to see some new country and meet some new people? Or, perhaps, to make your living in a different manner?
Traveling does not have to be tourism. It sounds like you have a vague itch that needs some scratching. Maybe if you thought about the reasons why you're discontent more closely, you could come up with a way to satisfy those itches better than just cruising around. Traveling with purpose and intent is different from traveling just to get away from home for a while.
And when moving, something is always lost for what is gained from the move. I've moved away from my home several times, and always ended up coming back in the end. There is no perfect place for me, but I'm back home again now with no intentions of moving away forever. For me, this is the place I know best with all of it's good and bad sides, and I know how to enjoy the good and tolerate the bad better here than wherever I lived in the past.
Even those who are never content always find a place to come back to, if for nothing else but to hang their hat for a while. Age makes sure of that, sooner or later. Life is always a series of compromises in some way, and contentment is where a person finds it; contentment is one of those things that can only be defined by an individual alone.
And every fresh start can be just as much a step backward as a step forward. It all depends on what your thoughts are of what constitutes a fresh start.
Striking out toward the far horizon is something humans do. If we weren't a restless species, we would not be inhabiting the entire planet.
Is it possible that you only want to see some new country and meet some new people? Or, perhaps, to make your living in a different manner?
Traveling does not have to be tourism. It sounds like you have a vague itch that needs some scratching. Maybe if you thought about the reasons why you're discontent more closely, you could come up with a way to satisfy those itches better than just cruising around. Traveling with purpose and intent is different from traveling just to get away from home for a while.
And when moving, something is always lost for what is gained from the move. I've moved away from my home several times, and always ended up coming back in the end. There is no perfect place for me, but I'm back home again now with no intentions of moving away forever. For me, this is the place I know best with all of it's good and bad sides, and I know how to enjoy the good and tolerate the bad better here than wherever I lived in the past.
Even those who are never content always find a place to come back to, if for nothing else but to hang their hat for a while. Age makes sure of that, sooner or later. Life is always a series of compromises in some way, and contentment is where a person finds it; contentment is one of those things that can only be defined by an individual alone.
And every fresh start can be just as much a step backward as a step forward. It all depends on what your thoughts are of what constitutes a fresh start.
That was an excellent post; thank you for taking the time to write it.
It's funny that you talked about restlessness. Part of the inspiration for creating this thread was a quote from one of my favorite magazines: "You need to learn to be content in your discontent. You will always be restless."
I suppose the reason I'm feeling "itchy" is that I don't want to settle into a place and become complacent so early in my life, leaving me with a bunch of "what ifs" down the line. If this is where I'm supposed to be, then I'm sure I'll figure that out... I just want to experience something different in order to quiet some of those fears of regret.
The fact of the matter is that your home area will ALWAYS be your home area. Almost anywhere else will not likely feel like home. You are wired perfectly for where you have always lived, and anywhere else will feel like a temporary aberration. Obviously, for career or family or health and safety reasons, a move may be well justified. But home will always be home. If you moved somewhere else, it would take decades for the new place to truly feel like home and supersede your original home.
It's kind of like the evolution of animals. Every animal is perfectly adapted and designed to thrive in its native, natural, ideal environment. To use an extreme example, most people who were born and raised in NYC have a VERY hard time leaving NYC, because they're accustomed to that lifestyle. Same goes for people who were born and raised in extremely rural areas. Even a city of 50,000 people is too large for them.
Look at it this way. If you relocate to somewhere else, you're going to be considered a transplant from somewhere else, whether you like it or not. Wouldn't it be nice to be considered a native to your area of choice to live in? It's preferable to be a native than a transplant.
Not sure I agree. I only lived in my "home" area until I was 18, and I didn't even start driving until around 20, so I don't even know my "hometown" nearly as well as the other cities I've lived in. It doesn't help that traffic there is way worse than other cities I've lived in.
If you're saying that it would be very very difficult for me to move to a village with 1000 people because I've always lived in reasonably sized cities, I agree. But that's a totally different discussion.
That was an excellent post; thank you for taking the time to write it.
It's funny that you talked about restlessness. Part of the inspiration for creating this thread was a quote from one of my favorite magazines: "You need to learn to be content in your discontent. You will always be restless."
I suppose the reason I'm feeling "itchy" is that I don't want to settle into a place and become complacent so early in my life, leaving me with a bunch of "what ifs" down the line. If this is where I'm supposed to be, then I'm sure I'll figure that out... I just want to experience something different in order to quiet some of those fears of regret.
You're welcome, arjo.
I thought you were young, even though you didn't mention your age.
I'm not. I turned 70 in June.
But age doesn't kill restlessness; I know many folks my age or older who have been gypsies for anywhere from the time when the kids finally left home to all their adult lives. I once knew a guy who was my father's age who had never settled down in one place after he came home from WWII! When I met him, he was older than I am now, and still on the move, in an old flatbed truck that held his teepee and all his belongings. He moved with the weather and had rambled all over the West from the Mississippi river to the coast for over 40 years when we first met.
It's not a bad thing to think about all the choices that may come your way if you move around at your age. Complacency doesn't always happen with everyone at all. I've known people in their 20's who were resigned to never striking out for the horizon. Many of them. Don't mistake contentment for complacency, though; many of those folks were happy enough with their lives where they were living to limit life changes to a small geographical area around the place they were born and raised.
And, of course, others were miserable. There are always obstacles in the way when it comes to rambling; most depend on what an individual is willing to give up in the way of physical belongings, and what an individual's priorities are.
Relationships can tie a person down more than anything else, but that doesn't mean a person has to be complacent. Spouses and children often travel around for lots of reasons- a job, a shared feeling of discontent, or a need to simply find new challenges and rewards somewhere else.
The thing you must understand is you will always have regrets about the path not chosen always. In my own life, I passed up some tempting stuff; one instance was my choice not to join a lady singer/songwriter who was a fellow musician and a friend. She was a recently divorced young housewife when we first met, and we played a lot on a musical circuit of clubs on the Eastern Seaboard at the time. We all made just enough money to get along, but she had bigger plans.
She wanted me to join a band she was forming, back in 1969. She was headed to California, where she had landed some work recording in L.A.
I passed. I hadn't been back to my home in Idaho for quite a while, and I was missing our family's ranch quite a lot. She went on to be very famous and very successful, and some of her bandmates also went on to have big careers in the music business.
Do I have regrets for that decision? No, not any more, but I sure did at the time. In my 20s, fame was a very tempting thing, but it didn't take long for me afterward to realize fame doesn't always equate with happiness. I think she was happy then and still is, but if I had joined the band and gone with her, I am still unsure as I was then if I would be happy, allowing her to decide what I was going to do, and setting my course for me.
Back then, one of the reasons I passed was because I had already spent some time in L.A. I didn't like the place then, and I still don't like it much now.
I now have other regrets that bother me much more than that one. That's how life is.
At the same time, I've had my share of triumphs of my own. Almost all of them came from not taking that path. My own path has been bumpy, but that's life, too. No one ever has a smooth and blissful life from beginning to end, and bliss isn't all it's cut out to be anyway. It's the troubles of life that offer the greatest rewards and the greatest regrets. How they stack up over time determines how blissful a person becomes, and nothing substitutes for time.
Remember that things will always change back home. If you have good friends, lovers, close family, and all the rest, leaving for more than a few years- 2 or 3 at most- will mean that all those relationships will change in your absence, and your home town will change, too. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
Avoid falling into the 'Pink Cloud'… that's my term for thinking that, if only I move, I will find a place where everything is perfectly wonderful. These days, I read a lot of stuff from folks who want to move to Idaho under full sway of the Pink Cloud. They think life will be perfect if they have A Little Cabin Home In The West, with 5 acres surrounded by mountains, trees, and nature.
A lot do move out here impulsively, but the fact is, everyone packs along their past with them anywhere they move to. A lot of them end up moving back to where they came from, broke and just as unhappy as when they arrived. Life here is no bag of candy. Just like anywhere else, there are lots of rocks in that bag, and it's not smart to spend everything in moving anywhere. Committing to a move is a very big deal that always has a lot of consequences, equally good or bad. It never takes long for the Pink Cloud to evaporate in the face of reality.
Good luck! I hope you find more peace of mind than you have right now.
Don't be afraid of change, but be aware of consequences and try your best to balance what you can as much as you can. No one can ever go in one direction while facing backwards, and at the same time, only looking forward can be just as bad if there's something back there on the path that is coming up to bite you in the butt from behind.
I've been moving around for almost 40 years. I left my "home" where I grew up to join the military and planned to return but never have. No place seems like "home" anymore and that becomes a difficult position to be in. While I do not and neither does my husband regret moving around, all the places and all the memories, when we are tired and want to go "home", there really isn't that place anymore. It looks like we are going to become full-time RVers. Believe me that there is indeed, "No place like home". I considered returning to that first "home" and have been looking at homes on the internet but having left other cities for only 2 or 3 years and returning, everything changes so fast now. It is very difficult to move into a new area and many people fail and return home. Make only calculated moves where you have weighed the positives and negatives versus your current situation. You can never get a feel for what it would be like living somewhere by just visiting. Vacation isn't a lifestyle. Good luck in whatever decision you make.
I'll just add that sometimes it's not the place, it's the job. That is, if you could have a job that made you good money but also provided a product or service that made a real difference in the lives of people, wouldn't that make you very happy, no matter where it was?
I think that's the real problem, sometimes. A lot of the work we do is meaningless in a larger context. Okay, it earns us a check and keeps some portion of a company on track, but we don't see it as significant. It's not providing shoes to children in a third world country ( see Toms shoes: TOMS Official Store | TOMS.com ) or other project that makes a difference.
I think once a lot of folks find meaningful work, the rest of it falls into place.
I'll just add that sometimes it's not the place, it's the job. That is, if you could have a job that made you good money but also provided a product or service that made a real difference in the lives of people, wouldn't that make you very happy, no matter where it was?
I think that's the real problem, sometimes. A lot of the work we do is meaningless in a larger context. Okay, it earns us a check and keeps some portion of a company on track, but we don't see it as significant. It's not providing shoes to children in a third world country ( see Toms shoes: TOMS Official Store | TOMS.com ) or other project that makes a difference.
I think once a lot of folks find meaningful work, the rest of it falls into place.
Yes, indeed!
There is certainly more in a happy life than just money. Making a difference to other's lives in some good way does not have to be large to create contentment in a person's overall contribution, but helping others in some way always adds to anyone's quality of life.
I think that sufficiency is probably better than wealth. I have known a few kids who came from great family wealth, and some have led very empty and unhappy lives because they have never needed to save for anything they desired, or had to work for anything.
Others used their trust funds as a foundation for their own businesses and learned how to succeed on their own terms.
One never touched his inherited wealth at all except to pay the rent. He lived as cheaply as someone who is unemployed at first, and quit using his trust fund as soon as he made enough to pay his living expenses. He's still so frugal no one who doesn't know him would ever believe how wealthy he is now, and he now uses most of his money helping others in some way or other on the quiet. he lives very modestly, except for one indulgence- he buys a new car every 2 years, but always has a strict limit on the cost of the car.
A life with meaning can be anything. And a life of empty indulgence is a life with no meaning. Joy in living is found where it lies for the individual, but almost always comes from some discipline in living in some way or other.
I've lived in the same general area my entire life (including a several stints in both rural and city settings) and I've traveled a fair bit both domestically and internationally. FWIW, my entire family (except for 2 cousins) have lived in the same county for their entire lives.
I've noticed recently that I'm getting an "itch"; I've realized that I don't want to keep living where I am, but I haven't yet found the place that truly feels like my home. I always enjoy my visits to other locales, but none of them ever seem to make me want to stay.
I'd love to move sometime within the next 2 years or so, but I have no idea where I want to go. I feel a strong urger to get out and live somewhere else, start something fresh... I feel as though I get a little more solidified here, a little more content, and a little closer to the status quo with each passing year.
Has anyone else struggled to find their true home? How many of you—even after many years—are still struggling to find your home?
I grew up in an Air Force town and heard all the stories about different places but w/the same stories. New school, same type of cliques, new neighborhood, same grumpy neighbors as well as wonderful ones. No matter where you go, if the spirit is restless it'll keep you in that "what if I went elsewhere" mode. I assume you are much younger than I am, but I do recall that restless spirit, until we actually did find our home. Actually it was a piece of land that stole our heart, and has morphed into a home that if I am reincarnated I want to buy and keep living in it!
If you are not ready to settle, and do not have strong ties, have you considered the Peace Corps. Here you will see worlds so beyound your imagination. Then, after your stint is over, your restless spirit may be ready to settle. No guarantee, though, as you may be wired like a Nomad.
There is an old saying that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. While it may seem that way, quite often the grass is no different. Know what is important to you, what you want a new neighborhood to provide for your needs and entertainment. Do you like the changes of the seasons, or do you never want to be in -20 degree winters. (They are actually pretty refreshing, tho".) I wish you all the best in your decisions.
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