Wherever I go, there I am

For many years I followed that standard mantra of the male corporate ladder-climber: promotions, more pay, and more responsibility… In other words ‘Go where we tell you for the good of your career.’ Over the years, that path took me to a number of different cities and finally dumped me off exactly where I want to be: on a dirt road in the mountains of a tiny New England village.

A recent trip has me thinking about the old expression “You can take the boy out of the city but you can’t take the city out of the boy.” I don’t think it’s true.

I visited the city and neighborhoods were I grew up, played sports, and went to church. I spent time with two aunts in their eighties who shared new and wonderful stories about my parents, tying together old memories in a new way. I also experienced an odd sensation. “The Burg” felt very familiar and extremely foreign at the same time.

What is it about landing at the airport, or driving over the bridge, that turns up the volume on a usually almost non-existent accent? What is it about ‘going home’ that hooks both the positive and negative aspects of our ‘psychic chromosomes’? Are there lessons from old neighborhoods and early family life that no longer serve?

Following my hometown pro sports teams (especially this year) satisfies some sense of allegiance and pride. There are plenty of other things that I learned back then that are better left behind. I realized on that visit that, unless I pay attention, I could become more of a slave to the past and less of an independent thinker than I imagine myself to be.

For example, I know now that “a shot and a beer” often isn’t social drinking and ethnic slurs aimed at someone’s family heritage are no longer cool. (They weren’t back in the seventh grade, either.) Those are some of the obvious ones, shed a long time ago. Maybe you have some, too.

Perhaps as older adults the challenge is to discover the more subtle ones: what unexamined ideas do you just assume to be ‘true’ because you grew up with them or because they fit with your sense of place? What remains unchallenged against the spotlight of our current moral, ethical, and perhaps even legal compass?

To use an expression from “The Burg,” what from your past “needs dusted off” and looked at?