Finding A Place In The World

I am sure if one paid critical attention to my blog over the years they would rightly perceive I live my life in a constant state of internal analysis.  Many have told me I think too much and honestly they are probably right.  Still thinking is my trade as is analysis and the two skills while earning me a living, seem to haunt me in everyday life.

I haven’t written much lately.  I think my urge to write is often stimulated by complexities or questions in life.  When they are present my creativity like water seeks a path and many times the blog presents the channel that I follow.  Often time’s questions in life are stimulated by my own actions and I suppose I am entering another one of those phases as I make another effort to secure a position overseas for the majority of the professional years I have left.

I took a walk at lunch today.  It is spring in South Carolina.  The weather is friendly while the pollen chokes your throat.  Spring brings a sense of renewal of life and the accompanying consequences.  For me it is new career efforts, for many of the flowers around me it is a time to release their essence to the world leaving my throat itchy, my sinus hurting and my nose at times dripping.  Despite the incidental discomfort it is a beautiful time of year that always seems to present possibility.

As I navigated the streets and avoided being nearly hit by cars making hasty right hand turns without contemplating the lives of the pedestrians before them,  I once again considered my feeling of not fitting in here.  I can testify many reasons for this.  Racial and political attitudes, cultural ties, guns, God, conservatism, intolerance, lack of familial connection, few friends, the list goes on and on.  I decided that this like the reason I have spent the vast majority of my life moving from place to place.   It is as if I am in a never ending search to find a place that I feel represents me.  The answer to my unsettled nature has always been right in front of me and at least I recognized it.  This realization placated my mind and spirit and left my restless heart contented.  

I passed by a bus shelter filled with homeless people and started heading up toward a hill that would take me back to my office.   My walk had been fruitful I thought.   A moment later this changed.  I am sure if you could have seen me from afar you would have witnessed a face of contentment suddenly change to one of a perplexed nature.  If I was truly searching for the place I fit in most in life, why did I keep choosing to live in places where I was different? My resolute feeling and justification for transient nature was suddenly ripped from like religion from a Baptist suddenly accepting that science was real.  If finding my place was in fact my goal, how could I possibly be seeking a life in such far flung places as Bolivia and now Thailand?  How could I marry a woman from the Philippines?  

As I approached my office building and entered the front door I realized that I was farther than ever from understanding myself.  Maybe change was simply a drug to pacify my mind and my restless soul.  My ideals, my transitory dreams and goals all involved being somewhere else.  I idealize the thought of living in a small apartment in an ancient Italian town.  Was this me?  I don’t speak much Italian and I would always be the outsider.  I think of buying a small condo in Thailand or the Philippines and spending my days diving and looking out at the sea.  In the Philippines I will always be a gringo and in Thailand there is already a word for me, Farang.  I will never be the same, never fluently speak their languages or exist with their collective memory.  

It appears this is the conundrum of my life.  I will be searching until the day I die for the fountain of youth and like Ponce de Leon I will wander through the forests and jungles tasting but never finding.  Or maybe, just maybe, I am an intellectual pioneer.  While vexed by my own curiosity I will learn to celebrate my difference.  Perhaps the secret is a place that will accept me for who I am and not contemplate what I am not.  This could truly be my place, my home.  If you know where this place is, please send a note, I would love to visit.