“Let’s have a cup of tea (or java) and chat a bit.”
“It is foolishness to think that you can leave a place your heart never left,” wrote Craig D. Lounsbrough, a Licensed Professional Counselor and author.
I once met a young woman who had never lived, never even visited, outside the county in which she was born. I was astounded. Travel was a high priority in my family, particularly to my grandmother and to my mother. My starry-eyed mother’s goal when she married my father was to travel around in a mobile home, while my father took jobs as a journeyman printer. Her plan was doomed when she almost immediately got pregnant. Had she not gotten pregnant, there was still no hope for her plan. My father was steeped in the belief that if you were fortunate enough to have a steady job, you should remain with it. He remained in his work as printer on the Wichita Beacon.
My revised version of my mother’s dream was to have friends located all over the country so I would have people to visit everywhere. This dream of mine has been far more successful than my mother’s. My friends have kindly accommodated my goal and scattered themselves around a variety of states.
Pieces of my heart are scattered as well. When we allow ourselves to be in relationship with others, when we establish solid connections, when we invest ourselves in living life fully, this heart-scattering becomes common to our human experience. As another author, Lewis Thomas, has written: “We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go.”
May the traces we leave enrich those people and places when we travel on.
Hope's Cafe 