To Here, With Love

Dear, here:

This is complicated.

Right? Have you thought about it? I’m guessing not…at least not directly.

Four letters, that’s all. Here. Something simple, diverse; capturing attention, creating confusion; intimate, communal; active, passive. Verb, noun, adjective, adverb. Here is everything and nothing is here.

My fellow Hatters, don’t get mad. Hang in with me here, there, and where we’re headed.

My relationship here is complicated. I was born there but, functionally, have lived here my entire life. Not born, just raised. Does that mean I’m “from here”? Are you from here? Where’s the line in the sand? Well, obviously, that line in the sand isn’t here. Anyone from here understands that.

Growing up, here was a narrow experience. Deep, but narrow.

Here was safe, here was comfortable. School. Church. Family. Country music. Lifted truck. Collar up. You look the part, you do the things, all within a 5-mile radius—15 minutes you say?

Narrow felt enormous. But is that all that’s here?

If you fit the mold (if you let it?), here absorbs you and shapes you, imperceptibly. Like a planet surrounded by moons: solidified and stationary in the moment but remaining an ever-moving target shaped by everything in the spheres’ orbit.

Maybe that’s the big “here” energy we’re always going on about?

It’s funny, since we’re just talking among friends here, I’ve wanted nothing more than to be anywhere other than here. When asked what my favorite place in the world was, it was never here and, strangely, never anywhere else.

I’m such a product of here in that regard: always looking for something outside myself; looking out there.

I mean, I spent time there, got there as fast as I could after high school. Dreams filled with never returning here, desperately looking for jobs anywhere else. Boston, Chicago, New York. Please, anyone. Bueller? Nobody wanted to hire someone not from there. Someone from here?

Defeated, I came back here, like that moon caught in an orbiting gravitational pull.

That’s the power of here—incomprehensible at times but, at best, draws us in. It’s also the power of there—a force created by, in relationship with, here. But getting there from here can be just as complicated.

There is exclusive. It’s not here.

There can be aspirational or confrontational; positive and negative—I remember someone, somewhere, sometime saying everything was relative—but I was hit by the negative before I could see the positive.

We learn the phrase “don’t go there” when we’re young. Not the sassy and finger snappy, “oh, don’t go there,” but the cautionary and reticent, “oh, don’t go there.”

But there was always here.

I know, revelatory! Insert a mind-blown or face-melting emoji; or imagine that someone actually wrote and published these words.  It’s also close enough to a Taylor Swift reference to either make this (seemingly) genius, or just lazy.

We digress.

As I’ve returned here—from there—lived and learned more about here, I see the ways there is passively and actively shaped and reshaped over time and space. I’ve never felt, or resented, here more because of its relationship to there.

I grew up with countless images of there. There filled the TV screen every night; I only had to wait with bated breath until 5 or 10 to find out what happened there.

Thank goodness I was here, not there.

When we’re caught bickering about directions and sectors, we’ve put Descartes before the horse. A red herring. The façade gives equal opportunity, but the gaze and outcomes demonstrate the gravity of the situation. Just because here and there are connected doesn’t guarantee connectedness.

Being aware of there makes its absence from here deafening. Here is so loud, there appears only as a whisper.

My voice, too, was just a sound. Unsure if my still, small voice still leaves room for a still small voice from there.

My life and my voice are now caught, separated, between here and there. Angry. Sad. Remorseful. Embarrassed. Shameful. Joyful. Hopeful. Inspired. Present. Absent.

In this act of change, we solidify both here and there. We use infrastructure to divide here from there, to get from here to there. Decided by whom? What does it mean to bring there here or here there?

But, being so concerned with the sirens call of there may make us lose appreciation of what’s here: our relationships to place and each other. As Spencer Scott notes, it’s difficult to build a relationship when our interdependence is inconceivable.

Grassroots? Grasstops? Or just grassfire?

Here is only possible because of there and there is only possible because of here. After all, every there is someone’s here. And, I would argue, the closer you get to there, the more you’re here.

Perhaps our only real lesson is to remember that moments old adage that there has been here all along.

So, friends, where do we go from here?

Is it really so complicated? Or is it just a path less traveled?

Funny how we can be from here and there and still consider each other from here when we choose to? Wild. There has more scales than a fish or a piano. But some chords resonate more than others.

Some day you may find yourself singing every word to music you hate, but it’s a part of who you are. It’s part of here and part of you. Where we go depends on our ability to transcend here and there without losing ourselves in the process.

If you’ve made it this far, I hope this doesn’t read as “oh woe is me” and I surely hope you don’t leave feeling “oh woe is we.” We’ve been on a journey here. We’ve Alice In Wandered all around there and here. My only fear merely being you not making it here.

Here is a choice, a risk, a relationship: to here, there, and everywhere in-between.

I’m glad to be here (mostly) and I hope you are, too.

Reluctantly, hopelessly, wonderingly

Collin