Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [134]
Aristotle wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit." The Dalai Lama said, "My religion is kindness." Or, as Thomas Paine wrote, "My country is the world and my religion is to do good." Moral people tend to have good moral habits and a few simple rules, such as do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They are the North Stars for the rest of us. They give us hope as we try to orient on our spinning planet.
HOME
The love of your own country hasn't to do with foreign politics, burning flags, or the Maginot Line against immigrants at the border. It has to do with light on a hillside, the fat belly of a local trout, and the smell of new-mown hay.
—BILL HOLM
The refugee experience of dislocation, cultural bereavement, confusion, and constant change will soon be all of our experience. As the world becomes globalized, we'll all be searching for home. There are two intertwined components to home: people and place. In fact, we can't really know people if we don't share a place with them over time. Community, communication, and communion all come from the same word, meaning "together" and "next to." Embedded in the word community is the concept of a shared place. Ah Internet chat room is not a place. The virtual university that "liberates students from time and space" may perform a service, but it is not a community. An electronic village is no village. Everywhere is nowhere.
William Riley said, "In a world without places there is no responsibility for yesterday and tomorrow." With place comes responsibility—to those who were here before us, to those who are here now, and to those who will come later. At a most basic level we behave better with people and places we will see again and again. We take care of the land, the water, the air, and the animals.
Gary Snyder advised, "Find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there." It is a simple thing, to be in a place where good behavior is rewarded and bad is punished. In that sense, all morality, like all politics, is local. The farther we are from home, from our people, the less likely we are to see a strong connection between our own behavior and its consequences. In an avalanche, no snowflake holds itself responsible.
Some of the worst behaviors in America occur in airports and on interstates, places where we move among strangers. These are places where the people who will be hurt by our behavior have no names. In places where we are anonymous, we can do whatever we want. No one will be a witness.
Home is where you know the names of the people you meet. You know who is kind and honest and who lies, betrays, or fools around. Home is where people care if you have a speeding ticket or a fever. It's where people ask about your grandbaby and your daylilies and know your favorite kind of pie. For newcomers, one of the hardest things is simply walking down streets filled with strangers. All of us, wherever we are, search for "an old familiar face."
If you live in one place a long time, you have a history. When you talk with your friends, you don't have to discuss Tom Hanks or Benicio Del Toro; you have real people in common. If you get sick, people will bring you soup and flowers, shovel the snow off your driveway, or go to the pharmacy for you. To move away from home is to move away from life.
In Spanish the concept of home has almost sacred status. Querencia refers to an instinct that people and animals have to find a place where they