I remember my dad every year, looking out the kitchen window, commenting that it was the end of August, almost winter time again. Oh, how I hated those words! It always brought back memories of past winters, walking (yes, I did!) three miles in the snow to school, before snow boots and snow pants were invented. I hated the cold in North Dakota.
Not having learned my lesson about living in freezing climates, I married a man from Minnesota, where we lived for 13 years, then moved to Montana, and once again encountered those nightmare temperatures.
After a divorce, I tell people that I put a snowball on the roof of my car and drove south till someone asked me what that funny icy thing was melting on the top of my car and decided that's where I wanted to live!
Now I look out my window, at the end of August, and rejoice how it's almost winter. But in April, I look out my window, and sigh. It's almost summer. How I hate the heat!
Today in Superior, it is raining – oh, how I love a rainy day here, moody and mystical, almost spiritual – but when I lived in Minnesota, I detested rainy days that would go into weeks. I would become extremely moody, with complaints that would remove any spiritual experiences I might have had.
It raises the question: As human beings are we ever completely satisfied with our life circumstances? Is there such a place as a Utopia, where the Fountain of Youth flows eternally, and the weather is always perfect? A perfect home?
Since time began, people have wandered, wondered, and wished for something that seems just out of reach, over the next hill, beyond the horizon. What drives us to make the trip that others have written about in The Iliad, The Odyssey, the Bible story of wandering in the desert? There seems to be a longing that life just don't seem to satisfy. The "If Onlys" and "What Ifs" that seem to be the underlying desires and questions that make us go searching.
As a member of a 12-step recover group, one comes to realize that the "Geographical Cures" we have been known to take over the years, aren't the solutions. No matter where you go, there you are!
Storytelling reminds us of three things: where we were, what happened, and where we are at now. If we haven't learned the lesson, or grabbed any meaning from the journey, our lives become cyclical, and here we go again, destined to repeat the same journey.
As I read the fairy tales and myths, a central theme keeps popping up. Where did Dorothy want to go after she landed in this strange land? All her complaining about Kansas, seemed to melt with the desire to go home. Where did Hansel and Gretel want to go even if it meant dealing with the wicked step mother? Home! Odysseus, through everything just wanted to go HOME.
If we learn anything from the myths, fairy tales or our own hero's journey, it is the understanding that home is not a place or a building/ It isn't Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I have come to learn that it is an attitude of acceptance of life as it is, courage to move on when necessary and knowing we have the power to do so. All wrapped up in the Serenity Prayer of the 12-step programs.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”
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