Re: OT:The meaning of home and my long rant

Posted by JerryS on September 25, 2011 at 00:49:51 from (65.0.22.241):

In Reply to: OT:The meaning of home and my long rant posted by redtom on September 23, 2011 at 21:16:21:

I have always had an exaggerated sense of home and place, maybe it’s a southern thing. I was reared in the same old country house my mother grew up in, on land my great grandfather began farming after he returned from the Civil War. Poverty is a relative thing, I suppose. We were money poor but land-rich and family rich, and that 220 acres always had a powerful pull on me. On two occasions I left jobs in the big city (Memphis and Houston) to get back nearer my roots.
Life didn’t go as I’d planned, and I found myself starting completely over at age 43---new town , new wife, new child, new job. I started over with nothing; at one point I was living in a storeroom. I was back close to the old homeplace, but by this time my folks had sold it. I was happy for them, but it felt like a part of me had been removed.

Since then I’ve done okay, I guess, I have a nice country place and lots of toys, and I retired last year at age 69. I have some money, but I no longer know what to do with it. The things I thought so urgent and important many years ago hold little or no meaning now. I think that many people early in life have no idea what they really want, or what is truly important to them. In most cases they are chasing someone else's definition of the dream---simply trying to acquire and do what their contemporary society tells them they are supposed to want and to do. If you can discover what you really want and attain it, you then at least have a shot at maybe not happiness, but contentment. The things you feel you have missed out on , had you experienced them, would probably have proven, in retrospect, to have been no big deal. It’s hard to sway kids with that kind of logic, though.

Of all the things you say you’ve missed out on, I’d have to agree that seeing other sights would be at the top of the list. I’ve been blessed to have driven all over this great nation. Never overseas, never really wanted to go. I hope you enjoy the love of your children. Don’t recall that you mentioned a wife, but if you have paired with a woman who is loving and supportive and the object of your tenderest emotions, then you have a jewel beyond price and you are among the richest of men. If she is shrewish and destructive your chances of happiness or contentment are negligible regardless of what financial circumstances attend you.

You are young enough to make many profound changes. As Dave2 said, get your head out of the past and put it into the future. Think your way through this; don’t let despair immobilize you. I don’t know you or your gifts or your skill/knowledge base, but you have plenty of time to improve your lot. That requires doing something different. Repeating what you’ve done for the last 20 years obviously is not going to change anything. Just remember, determine specifically what it is you want, then work to get it. It may not be what you thought it was. In my case I would be very content to live out my life in a one-room log cabin, my porch swing out front and my tool house out back. For me that would be “home”. I wouldn’t feel like I was missing a thing.

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