Perspective

Over the last two weeks, I spent some time fellowshipping with high school classmates. Some I have not seen in close to forty years, others I have seen in five year intervals, and an even smaller number that I interact with more often than every five years. Some of these folks I consider good friends and some are just acquaintances with whom I shared my high school experience. Many I remember and some I do not. None of that makes me any less interested in hearing how they are and what they are doing now and how they got to where they are now.

I look back to when we were young. Some things so incredibly important and experience has shown those things were not important. We were full of the fire and vibrance of life. Looking back, I shake my head at the hope we held and am simply amazed at the progress we made. We grew up in a region where the life’s blood flowed deep in the coal and steel industry. An industry that as we were gaining our majority was struggling to serve foreign competition that could do it faster and cheaper. Many of my generation migrated away from that region because the outlook for economic security was bleak.

Forty years later, the region still struggles economically. Yet, I visit and realize every time I drive within sight of the mountains that threw shadows over my childhood home, I know I am home. I could not wait to leave because I feared that there was nothing there for me. Now, I am proud to claim to be a son of the region. It molded me and taught me many lessons that I simply cannot explain. Lessons, I never thought would be from that area. My friends and I have talked of this phenomenon, some times we agree, we survived the area and learned those difficult life lessons.

When I visit now, even though I live not so far away, I realize that area feels like home but it can never be my home again. I wandered away and experienced life beyond those Appalachian Mountains and the Ohio River valley that created my home. My perspective changes recognizing the lessons I learned and the resilience I learned from my family, my friends, and my acquaintances of mastering, or more accurately, surviving that environment and experiencing close to sixty years of life and still kicking.

That is an accomplishment.