Looking for Myself....out there

For what I've done with my life, I've moved around a lot. I mean, I'm not in the military -- and neither were my parents. I am not a travel writer or an ambassador or a journalist. I do love to travel, true, and I could quickly and easily become obsessed with traveling -- did it not require so damn much money. But living somewhere is different. You are not a visitor. You are a part of the sense of place.

Moving to a new town is like starting a new relationship. Dating is the exploratory stage, discovering what your new town has to offer. Things get "serious" as you establish regular patterns of use and movement through space -- a route to your job, favorite grocery store, regular restaurant.

And honestly, at that point, the metaphor dies. So be it. Not all of them are meant to live on in infamy.

And we are not meant to live forever, either. We are not to know the number of our days. So, without being able to plan for a specific end, yet knowing that life is finite, we must choose how to live. And honestly, having a "best friend always looking out for you" isn't a bad way.

I keep miles of personal space between me and other people. I have been this way as long as I can remember. And when I do let people in, I take their problems personally, their frustrations personally. I am not good at separating. While my belief system holds with shades of grey, my relationships with people don't tend to. When people I count as friends are unhappy, and I am, as usual, powerless to effect any change for the better......well, it is unpleasant to me.

The relationships we choose to have do, at some level, define us, whether you believe in the Confucian matrix of self or not.

And yet, at the core, are we not each still looking for ourselves in here?