I wish life was perfect. It isn't. The Buddha taught this. Life is suffering. We're born, we grow old, we die.
Our goal shouldn't be to try to eliminate suffering in a vain attempt to make life perfect, but rather to look upon things as they imperfectly are without unduly reacting to them with thoughts and feelings of Ugh! So wrong! Horrible! Can't be!
Likewise, the place where we live has to be accepted as a blend of positives and negatives that will forever dance together in an intertwined dance of opposites that both attract and repel.
Take our current home in rural south Salem, Oregon. When my wife and I think about the pros and cons of where we've lived for 27 years in the course of questioning whether we should move at some point, our ponderings end up pretty much like this:
Like
No close-by neighbors
Large landscaped yard
Surrounded by nature
House with lots of room
Out in the country
Don't like
No close-by neighbors
Large landscaped yard
Surrounded by nature
House with lots of room
Out in the country
Well, damn, our likes and dislikes are the same!
I like that we can barely see only one other house. But often I feel isolated from other people. It's great to have so many trees and other vegetation on all sides of us. But taking care of all of this naturalness can be a big pain in the butt. The drive into town is pleasant. But it'd be nice to be closer to stores, restaurants, entertainment, and other attractions in Salem. We enjoy 3200 square feet of spaciousness. But every square foot needs to be cleaned and cared for.
And the same would be true, yet in a different way, if we moved into the Salem city limits.
Now the likes and dislikes would be reversed. We'd have plenty of neighbors close-by. Almost certainly, some would do stuff that'd irritate us. Urban delights would be near at hand. Yet we'd miss our nature trails. Etc, etc.
This might seem strange -- that what we like also is what we dislike -- but it's really no different from how I feel about my wife, Laurel, who I love deeply. The qualities that attracted me to her really are the same qualities that irritate me at times.
For example, she's strong and independent. So she isn't shy to disagree with me, to tell me that I'm wrong. She's organized and neat. So when I'm not, I hear about it.
The same is true for our own selves.
Isn't it the case that our greatest strengths also are our greatest weaknesses? I'm good at writing and speaking. However, I also can be horribly verbose. I'm an energetic citizen activist. However, I also can be excessively pushy and confrontational.
With age (I turned 69 this month) comes a bit of wisdom.
I've stopped believing that if I only lived here rather than there, everything will be great. I've also stopped believing that if my wife, or myself, was this way rather than that way, everything will be great. It won't be, because life always is a mixture of good and bad, pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness.
Still, each of us has the ability to look upon where we are, who we are, and how other people are with varying degrees of acceptance. On the where front, I'm a big fan of what Melody Warnick talks about in her book, "This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live."
(See my previous blog post about the book, "I'm attached to Salem, Oregon. Check out this 'place attachment' scale.")
Here's some excerpts from Warnick's opening chapter:
We always want the postscript to stories like these [of moving to a new place] to be "and they lived happily ever after." Though only some of us will move in a given year, mulling the possibilities is practically a national pastime, especially because of the long-standing habit of conflating geography and happiness.
As Eric Weiner points out in The Geography of Bliss, "We speak of searching for happiness, of finding contentment, as if these were locations in an atlas, actual places that we could visit if only we had the proper map and the right navigational skills.
Anyone who has taken a vacation to, say, some Caribbean island and had flash through their mind the uninvited thought I could be happy here knows what I mean.
If the idea that a place can make us happy is a fantasy, it's both sweet and pervasive.
...Researchers who measure place attachment don't try to examine the objective magnificence of one's city -- the soaring beauty of its skyscrapers and statues, the leafy depths of its parks. That would be like measuring a couple's love for each other by posting their photos on Hot or Not.
Instead, scientists study residents' emotions by asking whether or not their town feels like home. When it comes to place attachment, our towns are what we think they are. That means your city doesn't need to be the Platonic ideal of a city in the same way you (thankfully) don't have to be particularly goregous, clever, or wealthy to love and be loved.
...Ethan Kent, a senior vice president with the nonprofit Projects for Public Spaces, told me that Americans are emerging from an era of thinking of towns and cities as products for residents to consume.
"Now," he says, "the energy is more around the idea that the cities that succeed are the ones that allow people to help create them. That's how they become better places, but also how people are going to become more attached to them. When people help create their place, they see themselves reflected in it. It reflects their values and personalities and becomes more an extension of themselves."
So let's help create wherever we are.
Get involved with your city government, neighborhood association, civic organization, volunteer group, or whatever. Become friends with people who live nearby. Greet strangers with a hearty "hello." Pick up litter. Display a bit of beauty. Patronize local businesses.
These are just a few of the commonsense ideas Warnick talks about in her book.
The place where we live never will seem anywhere close to perfect if we view it as a detached object to be viewed from the outside, rather than as an intimate subject that's part and parcel of our own mind.
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