It's Been A Moving Experience

From Massachusetts back to California, with one big lesson learned

The poet Gary Snyder said it. The way to find a vital connection in your life is to find your place on the planet. Once you find it, dig in, and take responsibility from there. By moving across the continent, Jim and I learned the hard way that our place on the planet is the part of California that lies between Mt. Tamalpais and the Pacific Ocean. Now that we have returned, I think the lessons we learned may be useful to the rest of us.

1. Find your place.
Your place on the planet can be urban, suburban, agricultural, rural, or so far back in the woods they’ll need GPS, a helicopter, and dogs to find you. The critical factor, the one single thing you need to know about yourself, is how many close friends you need in order to thrive. The older you get, the more crucial the answer is for your wellbeing. The absence of friends can be fatal.

According to the American Psychological Association, “A review of 38 studies found that adult friendships, especially high-quality ones that provide social support and companionship, significantly predict well-being and can protect against mental health issues such as depression and anxiety—and those benefits persist across the life span …People with no friends or poor-quality friendships are twice as likely to die prematurely, according to Holt-Lunstad’s meta-analysis of more than 308,000 people—a risk factor even greater than the effects of smoking 20 cigarettes per day …On the other side of the coin, research has shown that loneliness—among people who lack quality friendships, romantic partnerships, or other relationships—increases our risk for heart attack, stroke, and premature death, according to a longitudinal study of nearly 480,000 U.K. residents …A meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstad estimates that loneliness increases the risk of early death as much as 26%…Despite the risks, Americans are getting lonelier. In 2021, 12% of U.S. adults said they did not have any close friends, up from 3% in 1990 ..

“Social disconnection, which is rising across age groups, appears to have worsened after 2012, when smartphones and social media became virtually ubiquitous. An international study of high school students found that between 2012 and 2018, school loneliness increased in 36 of 37 countries…”

The world is filled with beautiful places where you might want to live, but the local culture is the deal-breaker. If you are incompatible with the mores of a place, you will not be able to thrive in the beautiful land.

Jim and I had found our place on the planet, but fire and money drove us away. We had friends and relatives in Massachusetts, so we thought it would work. We were dead wrong. Despite joining the local Arts community, the local Audubon, the state Cultural Council community, the learning in retirement community, in 2 1/2 years we had one lunch date, one dinner date (just as we were moving away), and 2 phone numbers. Had anything happened to us, had we needed a ride or a friend, we would have been in dire straits. The place was killing us.

In February of this year, I asked a woman for whom I had worked how long it would take to be accepted. She said “about five years.” We don’t have five years to wait. Neither do you. We decided to go back home, fire and money be damned. We sold the Massachusetts house and left. We came back to a community where 50 people stopped us in the street to embrace us in the first 72 hours of our return.

A woman I know through social media recently posted that she was considering returning to the city where she was raised, having been away for more than 50 years. She asked her cohort if anyone had moved in their adult years to a new or old place, and what their experiences had been. Of the people who had moved, the majority reported that they were miserable, lonely, could not seem to make connection as they had expected. The reports came from all over the country.

2. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.

During my childhood, and probably yours, we watched powerlessly as forests were felled and suburban developments replaced them, streams were polluted with industrial outfall, the skies turned brown with smog. “Progress” was the word boot that stomped us. Not surprisingly, we turned all into environmentalists. We wrote laws. The polluters skipped the parts of the country reached by environmental regulation, and kept on killing the poor parts of the world - Appalachia, Indian Country, everywhere profit could be made. This hasn’t changed.

So we dig in, and take responsibility for our places. We restore the earth, and we fight back with lawyers, community, money, persistence. Children sue the state for failing to protect their rights to a clean, healthy environment. They win in court. Indigenous polities sue Canada over climate change; around the world, more than 2,100 climate-change-related court cases were filed at the end of 2022, more than double the total from 2017, according to a recent report from UNEP.

Most of those cases centre on human rights issues, with Indigenous Peoples arguing environmental degradation is threatening their culture, their access to food and water, and their lives. More than 100 nations guarantee their citizens a right to a clean environment. A growing number of Indigenous Peoples are also filing suits seeking to hold governments accountable to commitments they have made under international environmental accords, like the Paris climate change agreement.

In Argentina, Australia, Ecuador, France, New Zealand and the United States of America, among other places, Indigenous Peoples have launched climate-related challenges, leading to some major victories. In 2017, Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled an attempt to divert a river for mining purposes violated the rights of the Wayúu people. The court said climate change had already stifled the river’s flow, and a diversion would threaten the Wayúu’s food security.

Find your place on earth. Dig in. Take responsibility from there. It’s a meaningful life.