by Kai Skye

This hangs in my little home in Rochester, NY and since it’s on the refrigerator, I look at it a lot. (Ok, maybe too much. But that’s another post)

I love it, because it really says so much of what I have learned about unnecessary things over these last 50 years that I’ve spent growing up.

The weight of unnecessary things

Well, isn’t THIS a loaded concept. I’ve come to learn, though, that unnecessary things are defined by our age.  It doesn’t mean that what we thought at one age or another is inaccurate. Just that our definitions change over time.

As a young woman I felt I needed to shake off my shackles–the weight of unnecessary things. Expectations, primarily. At the time it meant I had to leave my family of origin and so much of what they valued to forge my own path. To understand just what I valued.

I was ill-prepared to discover what I valued. I didn’t even realize that I had a choice.

That, too, changed over time.

Even though I let those expectations go, along the way I took on other heavy weights. Different ones.

Did I think they were necessary? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I did. Or maybe I never thought about it. I just carried them.

Until I didn’t.

Flying far and free

Kai Skye (formerly Brian Andreas) always hits the nail on the head for me. Yes, loss is involved when we choose to fly far and free. No matter what we’re told, we really can’t have it all. Over the years I became keenly aware of what I’d given up to fly far and free.

And yet, for some of us? It’s the only way we can survive.

I wonder, could I have stayed in my hometown? Could it have held me?

I’ll never know, because I flew far, far from my home base.

Turns out, I never really left it.

It’s a part of me, for good or for bad.

These last few years in the little second home we put together in our hometown, I’ve reconnected with that hometown core of me.  I realized that I had to leave to learn its value.

And the same was true for my husband, who is from the same hometown and who never went back.

Until now.

We’ve traveled all over the world, together and separately. Still, one of our favorite places to come back to is our hometown.

What we thought we’d given up as unnecessary, turns out to be necessary, after all.

Maybe that’s part of the wisdom that comes with age.
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