I don’t love where I live. I like my tiny, historic home and the proximity to friends, family and Targets, but I don’t love my city.
I don’t love how it sprawls across the desert, stretching itself too thin. I don’t love the unimaginative housing developments and the Stepford track houses, each one identical and packed together like cigarettes in a box. I don’t love the barrage of sunny days that mock and taunt while they slowly drive you insane with endless repetition.
I came to the desert two months shy of my 14th birthday. It’s now been 14 years. I could have moved when I was 18, or 19, or 20, or any time between then any now, but there’s always been an excuse- money, family, college, fear, laziness.
And there will always be a reason not to do something. But the days are going to pass, regardless of what we do during them. We can either wallow in our wants or learn to be grateful for what we have. These two dichotomies aren’t mutually exclusive though. We can appreciate what and who surrounds us while still searching for home.
When my future husband and I dream of where we want to wake-up each day, we imagine ourselves surrounded by woodsy mountains and thick foliage and smoky rain. Sunlight filters through the leaves and lays dappled on a mossy forest floor. There’s room to grow food and animals and babies and dreams and everyday holds the opportunities to learn to rely on the land and each other and ourselves. It’s a far cry from the sparse and parched suburb we live in now.
But there’s beauty in all things, waiting to be seen. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of changing your perspective, like gaining a new angle on an old image. It gives us hope to create actionable steps to achieve the life we want for ourselves and our family. But in the mean time, while we wait for our plans to unfold, we’ve decided to try to love where we live.
This book that speaks about this exact topic. I look forward to being consumed by it for the next few days. I really hope I can make the most of my desert home and love it for what it is rather than resenting it for what it isn’t.
