Go back where you came from! Find out where you’re from, and what place served the beginning of your journey in this life.
Everyone has a place that she remembers from childhood — a grandparent’s house playroom, a block of a city, or the old garden and hitching post at grandmother’s hose. There are memories associated with these places, feelings of pure bliss, delight, or amazement. There’s deep value in understanding those places as an adult.
Recently, with my great-grandmother’s passing, I returned to Pennsylvania, to my grandparent’s small acreage. At the bottom of the grassy, marshy hill stands a hundred-year-old tree with a swing attached. As a young girl, I would sit down there, swinging away, while the adults talked at the top of the hill on the patio.
So, while the “adults” were off, going through old things, I sat on the swing again, going through my old memories. I found some of my great-grandmother’s college notebooks in the basement later, and realized that she struggled with experiences similar to my own.
Every person receives some personality traits from her ancestors, whether she realizes it or not. There are stories to be learned and life lessons to be realized from older family members — from both those alive and those who have passed from this earth.
Going back to your roots can realize many of those lessons It’s like re-reading a good book. Sure, C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” books were a great read as a child, but the symbols stand apart from the page, blatantly obvious, when you read it as an adult.
Russell Kirk claimed that, to maintain freedom, certain social habits had to be maintained. ”These are the habits of our hearts — good manners, kindness, decency, and willingness to put others first, among other things — which are learned in our homes and places of worship, at school and in team sports, and in other social settings.”
By returning to the place where someone grew up or has a first memory, there’s a sort of stability that develops in our virtues and being as an adult. There’s also the pride and association that come from being in a particular place.
Now, just to give a fair warning, there is some element of magic taken away from the memories of particular places when they’re revisited as an adult. In “A Separate Peace,” John Knowles calls this a double-diminution: Past things shrink because they once seemed larger and because time has degraded them.
But by revisiting familiar places that host childhood memories, the values and meaning associated with that place become solidified and certain in an adult consciousness.
