Stay
“Don’t
give up on what’s here. The love you want is no other place.”
Natalie
Goldberg (The True Secret of Writing, p.33)
I hear
a lot of talk these days about leaving the United States if our current
president wins another term. Friends are researching the best places to go,
whether Europe or Central America or maybe a Caribbean island. I must admit, I’ve
thought about it myself. Our young people, who are already world citizens, don’t
hesitate to think in such terms. They are sick and tired of the same old lies
and corruption and gridlock, no matter who is sitting in the seats of power.
They are tired of old people determining the rules they must live by; rules with
which they do not agree. Before you say that they are too young to know what is
best, remember that our founding fathers were in their 20’s and 30’s when they
drafted the Constitution. Young people today find our notions of “liberty and
justice for all” hypocritical and ridiculous, especially if they are black or
brown or gay. Who can blame them for wanting to chuck it all and find Nirvana?
Perhaps
life is better somewhere else. I suspect there is more true freedom in many
places, but as long as there are human beings on this planet, there will also
be greed and corruption. We seem hard-wired to want what we don’t have whether
we live in Nevada or Netherlands or Nepal. And some of us are quite ingenious
in getting it. We put enormous energy into scheming ways to rook someone else
out of what is theirs and figuring out how to hide what we’ve done. I always
wonder why all that brain power isn’t put to better use.
Here’s
the thing—the hurdle we have to jump to find happiness and contentment is not a
geographic one. It isn’t a location or a large net sum in our bank account. Instead,
we have to reach it by way of our interior landscape—the one we find most
remote and terrifying. It is rough terrain, shrouded in mystery and subterfuge.
It isn’t reached by boat or plane or even Tesla. It’s not on Google maps; it
doesn’t even have a name—except our name. Finding it takes courage and perseverance
and determination. But when we do locate our contentment, it won’t matter where
we are on planet Earth. That place will be home.
Don’t
give up on what’s here. The love you want is no other place, no matter what
else is out there. All things change with time and the movement of evolution is
forward. We are living through a particularly rough time, but it will not last
forever. Stay and make it better.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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