A SENSE OF PLACE

I grew up in Gary, Indiana. Not the best of places in the good times. By the time I was a teenager and the steel mills were “rusting,” it became a scary place. But then, thankfully, it was time for college and I moved to West Lafayette to attend Purdue.

I was a decent student in high school, by juxtaposition I suppose, though I never gave it much effort. But for a combination of reasons, I was given a few scholarships that ensured a full ride as long as I kept my GPA to a B or above. Affording college, and on a main campus, was beyond my wildest dreams growing up. To say the least, I was excited.

But then the semester started and my world was rocked. It began with the calculus class where, on the first day of the semester, the prof gave the iconic welcome: “Look at the person on your left. Now the one on your right. At the end of this semester, two of the three of you will not be here.” From there, it got scarier. When the actual learning and exams started, I felt like I had been hit in the face with a door.

Most of us try to avoid such fortuitous (yes, I said that) situations for some reason, and I lead that pack. Those kinds of deep immersions into things totally new and foreign to us are frightful. We envision a much greater likelihood for failure than success. But, as I said, it was a very fortuitous situation. In less than a year, I began to realize that I was indeed “blooming,” far more so than I ever could back in Gary. By the middle of my senior year, I realized I was a completely different person than I was when I first came to Purdue. In this new environment, I had opportunities I would never have seen back home and there was no one here who knew and remembered me “back then.” Essentially, my past mistakes were erased. When graduation came, I stayed — for a long time.

But sometimes, even the best places for us play out. I eventually realized that I had gone as far as I could in the frozen north and when Texas called, I answered. It was a scary move after more than two decades in West Lafayette, but Clear Lake allowed me to bloom in ways Indiana never could. Then, nineteen years later, I met Uvalde.

I still live in Clear Lake but for about a year I spent weekends and most of the entire summer in Uvalde. It was a chance to get away from the environment I knew and to get some work done on a book chapter I had agreed to write. I got that done of course, but what I really worked on that year was becoming a part of this new place. I learned how much I would love living in a small town, especially one like this that was so close to all the great spots in Hill Country, and even better, it was only half as far to Big Bend as from Clear Lake. But best of all, I got to know some really great people, people I still go back to see a decade later. And of course, Uvalde allowed me to “bloom” in ways I couldn’t here at home. The changes I saw in myself were startling.

When I left Clear Lake for this recent Hill Country trip, I left believing the philosophy that we should all bloom and prosper right where we are planted. I still can’t disagree with that entirely. We should indeed work to be the best we can at any moment and place. But what happens if we “bloom out,” if we find we have stagnated and just can’t go any further? In Uvalde, I started to look at this from a slightly different angle. Perhaps place is more critical to our growth and happiness than I had assumed.

I think our sense of place somehow connects us to, or at the very least correlates with, our sense of self. Perhaps it is the place that helps us to identify and understand who we are. Whatever the case, together they are as necessary to a fulfilling life as air and water.

Bloom where you are planted—yes. But when the time comes to grow beyond the size limits set by that crack in the sidewalk, don’t be afraid to find a new “place,” be it geographic, a career or a relationship.

We all need an accepting and nurturing place in order to grow, expand, and thrive—and to be the best humans we can be.