I’ve just returned from Scotland, where I spend a good amount of time doing research. I think I may have mentioned this bit once here. But it doesn’t hurt to repeat so that we are all on the same page, if you will, so that my story makes sense.
So while in Edinburgh one night, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window in my hotel room with views across the town and ‘some’ body of water in the distance (sorry for my show of disoriented being), all of a sudden, I couldn’t breath, freaking out about my life and where it is headed. It happens; I know, to all of us at some point or another in our lives. Mine had to be a week or so ago, in Edinburgh.
In that moment, I felt the need to email a few friends and my mother, telling them that I finally settled on where I wanted to move or retire…sooner than later, and it was Scotland, more specifically, Edinburgh. The response from all of them was mutual, a variation of the smiley emojis and the ‘LOLs’.
Only one person came back with ‘get your head out of the clouds.’
I’ll show you – I said to myself and went to bed.
This week while I prepare for the next semester at Stanford University continuing education program, I noticed the welcome email from the instructor was dropped in my email address. Naturally, I clicked to open it and began reading, loving every word he’d put down on paper. And among the advice, and inspirational quotes the professor included, one stood out the most:
This is advice from Flannery O’Connor. She says, “Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place… Nothing outside you can give you any place… In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”
What say you?
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