To be from somewhere, you really have to spend your time there; to soak it up, sink in, and belong. It takes years to develop real friendships and professional relations. If you are constantly moving around, there is no time for these relationships to develop and you have none.
If you are from everywhere, then you are from nowhere. If you travel around a lot, you see many things and get a general feel for everything everywhere, but you are not really a part of anything anywhere. You are from nowhere. You are an observer, and not a participant. You are an outsider, and not a structural component.
In my case, I have lived in Los Angeles for thirty years, but I have lived in ten different apartments and seven different neighborhoods. I haven't really belonged to any of them even while I lived there. Prior to that I spent almost ten years in Champaign-Urbana, but lived in 13 apartments in the time that I lived there. I'm not really from anywhere.
You are either from somewhere and you rarely travel. Or, you are from nowhere and you travel a lot. To be honest, there is some middle ground, but if we really analyze the truth, few of us ever manage to stay there very long.
Most of us are really from nowhere.
copyright (c) 2017
William Schaeffer
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