My Uncle Gizz loved to say, “No matter where you go, there you are.”
It was his take on the old saw that holds to the notion that you can take the boy out of the country, but you aren’t likely to wring the country out of the boy.
Or, as Emerson wrote on the intoxication of travel in his essay “Self-Reliance”…
“I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
To me, it’s not whether or not to go from the country to the city, or from New England to Europe, rather to be yourself wherever you are.
Noodling on all that, I wrote a poem.
FINDING HOME
Down the hill an acorn rolled
Until it struck a stone
So still it lay there, quite surprised
To find itself at home
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What you say is so true, and something to reflect upon. Thank you for your insight, Sonny.
I have a dear friend, Ray, who’s almost a hundred years old now, still doing well. Still thinking, chasing his “high ideas”. I heard someone ask him once what were the most treasured moments in his life. Ray looked at him and said, without blinking, “When I was blessed to have some insight into the mysteries.” I think about what Ray said, and I can see that his insights brought him closer to the Truth that is promised to set us free.
Emerson’s problem was that he took his ” Giant ” with him as he traveled. He would have found much greater joy in his travels had he allowed his inner “Boy ” on the journeys. Think of the fun of travelling with a Samuel Clemens attitude !
Red Taylor
Yep, looking for the deeps and the shallows, sounding the silver river as he went.
We leave a bit of ourselves everywhere we’ve been.
That’s why Uncle Gizz never ventured farther abroad than Vernon, Reform, Tuscaloosa, and Columbus, Mississippi–to the north, south, east and west, respectively–so he wouldn’t run out of himself.