How the ‘Burg Became My Home
One morning this past week, a regular at the coffee shop where I work came in, Roger. Roger has quickly become a friend, always up for a good conversation, always willing to offer insight. For this post, I wanted to write about the concept of home. I figured I’d ask Roger first, and I thought his answer was worth sharing with y’all.
“Home is subjective. There’s no standard for what, or who, home is. When I tried adhering to the “American Dream” vision of home and belonging, I was deeply dissatisfied. You don’t have to strive for a standard of home. If you stay open, you may encounter possibilities you never would have seen had you been striving for something else. We live in a time when everyone is expected to live in a box, but it’s the 21st century...I think we’re past that. It’s time to form new relationships, with others and with ourselves. We need more opportunities, choices and freedoms, not less. If you have less than that, who will be happy, aside from the people that set the standards?”
I’ve always glamorized the archetypal drifter. The nomadic, Springsteen-style guy who rides a motorcycle from state to state playing a beat-up guitar in dive bars. It’s hard to imagine myself in that position, though. I sink my roots in deep. Familiar faces keep me going. I can’t drift for long without missing the people I love. I’ve been living in Lynchburg for over half my life now, and at this point I’ve definitely got a lot of love for this place. Its people keep me grounded, its scenery brings me peace, and I feel there’s a place for me here. There isn’t much more I can ask of a city than that.
Unfortunately, for me it just isn’t as simple as “Lynchburg is pretty nice, so I’ll stay here forever.” I have a bad combination of perpetual restlessness and relentless idealism. These two put together leave me forever hungry for a perfect place and a sense of complete fulfillment. Lynchburg has issues, just like any other town. My restless side sometimes just wants to pack up and go, and be like that mythical, motorcycle-riding nomad. The idealist in me, however, sees so much potential in Lynchburg and its people. I see this city as a place that, at its best, can make anyone feel at home.
I think that for me, home is the community that I find myself most deeply rooted in. There are people all over the place that I feel connected with on that level, and many of those people are here in Lynchburg. That’s ultimately why I stay, and why if I left someday it would be one of the hardest things I can imagine. But, like Roger said, home is ultimately subjective. For some, it’s strictly an environment, a habitat. Somewhere where you can sense that you are holistically at your best. For others, it’s a sensory experience, the kind that brings back the best memories. My friend Katrina described it as “The smell of lavender linen sheets” and “a cup of soup someone else made for you,” among other things. Her take on the question was incredibly sweet.
I didn’t feel at home in Lynchburg until I started to realize that no matter where you are, it takes time and work to thrive.
It takes time to identify what makes you feel at home. Like Roger said, standards and expectations are set that won’t fulfill us, and for the longest time, I was trying to meet those standards. That’s why Lynchburg seemed uninhabitable to me. In my mind I was picturing idyllic, picturesque, not rough around the edges, not complicated, not challenging. I wanted easy and comfortable, and that’s what I chased after. I didn’t feel at home in Lynchburg until I started to realize that no matter where you are, it takes time and work to thrive. It was at that point that I stopped waiting to start enjoying it here and pulled my head out of the sand. I had to put my computer to sleep and go do things, but that was all it took to be involved in a community that quickly made me feel at home here. The people I’ve met since then have made me love Lynchburg even more.
Like I mentioned, though, Lynchburg has issues. You can walk through one part of town and you see the American dream fulfilled. Rows and rows of McMansions (saying “McMansions” always reminds me of the Ben Folds song “Jesusland” which always reminds me of the parts of Lynchburg that I struggle with). Then you go a few neighborhoods away and see people living in poverty. The former seems to care very little for the latter. There’s a comfortable divide between the struggling people and the people living in abundance. There’s a quiet undertone of racial tension that has been lingering for centuries. But if there’s anything that people are in Lynchburg more than anything else, it’s comfortable. Not much changes here.
You have to remember I’m saying all this about a place I love, a place I really do call home. But I struggle to feel like I belong here, in this town, on this planet. I think everybody does sometimes. Sometimes you realize that that longing inside you for home in the mystical, metaphysical sense, just hasn’t been fulfilled yet. I take that to mean, as C.S. Lewis put it, that I was made for another world. There’s ever-present brokenness here, and we’re all trying to find a place to belong in the midst of it. Lynchburg is home to me because in spite of everything, there are people here that I love deeply, and feel loved by. That’s home to me, and I’m grateful to have one.
Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without the classic Lynchburg anthem by Jeff Carl.