Do you ever go somewhere and intuitively know that you belong there? You just see it and feel known in that place? That’s me in old dive bars in Ireland and Scotland. That’s me on backcountry roads, in the dark deep of some forest, and in some old-fashioned kitschy town. Or in the aisles of a vintage bookstore, amid musty smells, cracked spines, and worn pages.
I don’t always like new things. I panic over modernity. I panic over the erosion of the beauty of the past. Over the thought of things being destroyed indefinitely. I once visited a prehistoric Irish village that's been gradually collapsing into the sea, and I think about that place a lot. Nobody can stop it. Time and tumultuous weather are surrendering it to the ferocious Atlantic, and soon it’ll be lost forever. The ancient landscape permanently altered.
I get weepy over things like that. I’m drawn to what’s come before. I’m drawn to what feels like home. The living history of things. The lives that came and went and loved and died in that space. I like to know where all the heartbeats are, and where they've been. I like to know that things existed before me, and that something will come after. It feels safer that way. It’s been said that we don’t really live a life, we live a pattern. Maybe that’s mine.
Nonetheless, sometimes we are forced to walk forward into unknowns, leaving behind safe havens and familiar things, and be okay with it. So that’s what I’m gonna try to do. There's no need to be wistful about the past, or to fear the uncertainty of the future. Nature isn't like us. It isn't upset when things end, change, or fall to ruins. It doesn't know anything about attachment. It just allows for release.
Allow the air to escape from your lungs, and go. Have gratitude for every lesson and every shift that momentarily unsteadied your balance. There is so much of this gorgeous life around the bend.
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