Young people are expected to leave. It is a mark of success. To remain in your hometown is to have failed. The modern ideal is to cast off the past, family traditions and relationships, ties that connect us to places and to people, and to forge our own unique paths.
Also, this at CiRCE:
In his novel Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry notes that, for moderns, education means leaving. Moving up has become synonymous with moving on – and moving away.
Those words came back to me while reading Maria Trapp's recollection of a conversation she had while on tour with her family in America (the bold parts are my emphasis):
"How does it happen," mused Agathe thoughtfully one day while we were riding through the endless pine forests in North Carolina, admiring the bright red soil, "that I feel fine and at peace and quite at home here in America as long as I am in the wilds? The minute, however, traces of men show up, these roadside advertisements, for instance, these ugly wooden houses with their scales [she meant clapboards, completely unknown in Europe], the dump heaps around the huts, the car cemetaries [she meant auto dumps]--oh, it makes me so unhappy! It spoils the countryside, it doesn't fit; then I don't like America."
Funny--I felt the same way, and we found others did, too. There was some disharmony which man had brought into the ravishing beauty of this country.
"If I think of the villages in Europe," Rupert entered the conversation, "in the Alps or in France or England or Scandinavia, there the houses fit into the landscape, and the people do, too. They seem to be a part of it."
"Yes," said Werner, "that's true; and those old farms at home look so nice and homey and well-kept, with flowers all around. Look!" and he pointed through the window. We were just passing a run-down farm with rickety barns. "Why don't these people take better care of their houses for their children and grandchildren?"
"Ah," put in our driver, who had listened to our spirited conversation, "that's where you make a mistake. Who wants to live in the country with children and grandchildren? They just want to make some money, for instance, cut a wood lot or get a few good crops, and then move back to town and take it easy."
"You mean," gasped Hedwig, "that the people on these farms won't live there forever?"
"Sure not," he laughed, and his mere tone of voice said, "you crazy Europeans."
"Who wants to work hard from dawn to dusk if you can make more money much easier in a factory in the next town?"
Well, of course, that solved the riddle why so many houses were not painted.
Anyway--this side of America was very strange to us. We had to learn much more about this country and its people before we could fit the many little pieces together. At the moment it was puzzling.
