Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I also related that aside from college and law school, and except for a six-year interval living in NYC, I have lived in the same general area, about 24 miles (now 27 miles) from Times Square. *********
My emotions vary between welcoming the familiarity, and feeling closed-in by the lack of change. Even many of my close friends, while living elsewhere, are the same people.
Have others had that experience? Or are others homesick? Or mixed? That is this thread's poll.
In June 1986 I met my current law colleague on a Metro North train and was working for him by that afternoon, in an office building near Grand Central Terminal in NYC. We were together more or less continuously over the past 34 years. Our office moved downtown for about a year, then to Westchester from 1991 through 2013. Back to the City with a larger firm, then back to roughly the same place in Westchester. Now, we merged and we are now across the street from our 1986 location. This song comes to mind:
Mine used to feel like it was going in circles. As of the past couple years it's actually been progressing. Feels good.
Mine doesn't feel bad at all; and there are non-circular aspects. I didn't know my wife or have any kids (that I know of) at the time I met my colleague and our office was previously on Third Avenue in the 40's, though I started dating her in January 1990, just before our office moved in April 1990. At that point the circularity started with a vengeance.
My guess is that it is mostly circles with what appears to be change but is really only slight variations on a theme...so changes, but usually minor once someone has finished their education, left home, etc.
All of life is really a circle, some aspects smaller and easier to see and sense but others with a larger arc that is less perceptible until you are old and wise.
Mine has been more of a spiral, progressing forward. So yes, there are some circular "looping back" aspects in it, but not a true circle where I end up back where I was.
Professionally, I deal with a lot of the same people I've dealt with in the past, but I've done things I never imagined I'd take on, so I would call that forward progress.
Not sure if I'm interpreting the OP correctly. One interpretation could be "you can't go back to what you were" and the other could as easily be "you can't escape from what you were."
I think of my life progressing in stages but I understand the concept of coming full circle toward the end. Since it seems unavoidable I've become comfortable with it. But each phase brings its own challenges and gifts. So there is always the new.
I live the life chance and I designed for myself for most of the year and then I spend an extended vacation in a subtropical area alone. There I can shed the built in responsibilities that come with my life and take time to know the me that exists outside of my normal life. But, in a sense even that has become a circular happenstance although I observe new changes.
It is a change, though, and sometimes a challenge. I know that I become unhappy if there isn't a wide variety of choice in my life so while I like the stability of the circle I do apply many choices to how I live my daily life.
In the end, I think, it isn't whether the circle is a good thing or bad. The past will call you back in many ways - memories, resentments. Some of that is unfinished business worth revisiting. It's how you, yourself, have come to look at it and make it work for you.
I'm trying to think of someone who can live their life without the circle. Maybe it's not possible. Even mavericks who "cut out for the territories" will make their mistakes and repeatedly unless they return to the source.
Edited to add:
I had to do a quick google on the song before I spoke. It was written in response to Neil Young's "Sugar Mountain" lament that now that he was twenty he could no longer go to his old haunts of friends because of the age limit. I had to chuckle. Remember the bunch that didn't trust anyone over thirty? LOL
The Lady of the Canyon's song doesn't address life past twenty either. So we're getting a perspective of a place, time and age that doesn't mesh with the things you learn as the decades pass. I wonder what she would write about the circle now.
Not sure if I'm interpreting the OP correctly. One interpretation could be "you can't go back to what you were" and the other could as easily be "you can't escape from what you were."
At many point escaping would have been easy and tempting. Trust me, while I had a good relationship with my natural and step-father, and my mother (father died when I was 15 at age 47) was not necessarily very user-friendly. I had a chance to take up a legal career in Mississippi, Texas and later New Jersey. At all time t hose chances just didn't add up. And my introduction to my wife was purely random. That more than anything led me back to my geographical area and my synagogue. My professional combination uniquely made sense. What is eerie is that less than 10 yards of pavement separates my office from 1986-90 and now, and with the same colleague. And with that colleague, during 1991-2013 and 2017-9, less than four miles separated those offices from my childhood stomping grounds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lodestar
jb, I wish you'd tell us what you have in mind. I think there's a lot worth interest here. Have I meandered off the spot?
No, you are dead on. In all cases I had the means and in some cases motive to break the circle but in the final analysis it never made sense to do so.
Okay. There is a thread of educators running through my family on both sides and it echoes in my life. Maybe you're saying those tendencies and potentials we have don't make sense until we mature. Maybe even until we don't have some other needs met. A partner can be a great motivator.
I know all my life the inclinations have been there but it making sense for me didn't happen overnight. All the things I saw and heard took time to make me who I was going to become.
Reminds me of the day an older cousin became an ordained minister. Outside the church I heard his father, the self-elected black sheep of the family say, "We Lodestars have been preaching to people for years. It's about time one of us got paid for it."
In reference to a current thread about turning into our parents sometimes I wonder how many who came before me were thinking similar thoughts and acting on similar impulses. It's not all just nurture.
In your case it can almost sound spiritual. Like your treasure waiting to be discovered, pursuing you. That does make it sound eerie.
To add to the circular analysis I am now working within four blocks of my late father's office through 1972, 211 East 43rd Street, New York, NY. I even remember his old work number, (212) YUkon 6-1290. I can't find his cell number though.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
