EverydayBliss: Wherever You Go, There You Are

A stately, old tree downtown at our planetarium.

Listening to right now: The Silk String Quartet

Today's Happiness Formula: A bit of a lie in (obviously, since I am posting so late!). New music transferred to the iMac.

Following My Bliss By: Working on an essay that has been too long in the making. Getting back to daily yoga; I've been off my schedule, and being a schedule cat, I must be more faithful.

By the time I was 18 years old, my family had moved 19 times.

Yes, you read that right -- 19 times in 18 years.

The longest I ever lived in one place, consecutively, was 5 years. And so you can calculate that there were years when we moved more than once in a twelve month span.

I learned to fit in and make friends quickly. But I also learned to let them go just as quickly. I learned that friends and places and experiences were all impermanent, interchangeable, short term blips to be moved on from and forgotten.

Forgotten was best; it didn't hurt as much if you could compartmentalize it.

My partner had the exact opposite experience, being raised in one house and moving for the first time to go to college.

We have lived in this house -- a house named "lilypad" -- for over 9 years. At about year 3 and 4, I experienced a major itch. It was time to move, my internal clock almost screamed. How better to clean through your stuff? I would research places; we would visit them.

Then I would cry at the thought of leaving all that we have planted here -- the trees, the tulips, the lilac, the friendships. Finally, by about year 6, I got over having this periodic moving itch and settled in for the long haul. I can't imagine moving. Leaving this small plot of land upon which we have experienced so much, into which we have grown deep, fat roots.

Tap roots.

Trees have one or another type of root system. Tap roots are the roots that go straight down, dig deep, don't sprawl toward the surface. These trees can be placed close to structures, so they make excellent city trees. If you try to move them, most likely you will kill them.

The other type of roots stay close to the surface, sprawl. They are shallow rooted and will easily fall over in a strong storm. They don't have the staying power of a tap rooted tree.

I'm a tap-rooted tree now and proud of it.

I am recovering from a disease that seems rampantly communicable in this culture: Movingitis.

This disease is actually attached to many other diseases.

Sprawl. We are eating up our countryside in the name of finding greener pastures, which may be greener...until we get there and dig them up and throw down McMansions with poison-lawns, on which we allow our pets and children to play.

Disconnect. People are so busy moving, looking, hoping for something better -- like changing channels on the TV in case there is a better program on -- that they miss out on what is around them. They miss out on long-term, deep relationships with people, with places, with trees.

Unhappiness. I fear that Movingitis is not a disease but rather a symptom that plays out like an individuated virus -- hiding the underlying cause, which is a soul-sickness. We are convinced that there is something wrong with us and that the right car, the right house, the right town will fix it.

Think about it. In all of human history, we are the first to move for moving's sake. And like art for art's sake, this is a purely masturbatory impulse. It's all about temporarily feeling good or feeling startled into feeling something.

People used to move because there was a real, outside threat: another clan attacking them or bad weather depleting food sources.

But we move to run. We run from ourselves. And for a while it feels good. We have a new place to learn so we feel stimulated. We have to get settled so we feel productively occupied. We have new people to meet -- people for whom we can be a brand new person if we so choose.

But after a year or two or five, we are still the same, unsatisfied person, and we are angry that this move didn't do it, didn't make us feel complete...and so we move again.

I have lived many places. They are all essentially the same; all towns have good and bad. But mostly they are the same, because we are the same person, no matter where we are.

Remember: tap-rooted trees don't fall down in storms.

What kind of tree are you?

A poem for this topic, by moi:

No Matter Where You Are

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Pay attention to the ground that is
under your feet.
Take off your shoes, and
go barefoot in the grasses,
in the sands, in
the waters, in the here,
in the now, in this
right place.

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Claim the land
of your birth.
Get on your knees and
put your hands in
the dirt, pull out
weeds by their roots,
plant seeds.
Stay and watch
them sprout and
grow. Care
for them, know
them all.

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Lift your face to this
sky, breathe in
deep, feel the air
on your skin.
Open your eyes to
the clouds, open your
ears to the birds.

Be the native
that you
are.