Finding your way back to ‘You are Here’
I went to my f-f-for-, never mind, high school reunion. It had been twenty years since I’d been to one and ten years before that. The ten year markers were good timing for keeping up with the Cadets, but let me tell you…a ton of life happens when two more decades have crawled/flown by.
Going back to the site of those school years spent together was a bit of a letdown. It wasn’t there. Well, it was…in all its state of the art, jaw-dropping architecture and no expense spared new school building kind of way. But not the old blue paint stone-walled school with the red lockers, Selectric typewriters, cafeteria (where I ate too many Hostess Ding Dongs while hanging with my friends), and miles to hike from one class to another. If you had a class in a portable outside the main building, you really felt like you were out in the hinterlands.
During the tour, I discovered the old hike was manageable compared to the trek in the massive new school! But, the fresh crop of students won’t know any better. They’ll just get their game on – or be late.
Going ‘home’ to that part of my life was like coming back in from the hinterlands of twenty years to find that some people and things had changed a lot, while some hadn’t changed much at all.
What was special was that for a school day’s worth of hours many of us gathered at ‘You Are Here’ – the place from which we had launched into young adulthood and begun charting the course of our lives. I can only imagine the number of transitions our stories represented as we embraced the fun of being 17 and 18 again in f-f-fif, never mind, -year old bodies. For a few hours we were in 1975 B.L. Before Life.
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Friends, have you ever felt like you’ve been off in the hinterlands? Wished you could find your way back to ‘You are Here’ so you could chart a new course? Would you be happy just to see an arrow pointing in the direction of a do-over? Does your heart need to come back in from the fields of gold that looked so inviting but left their tarnish over the years?
I know what it’s like, for I had to hike back in from the hinterlands, chart a new course, be blessed with a do-over, and return my heart to ‘You are Here’ – where the Center of my reason for being resides. If you’re ready to take the first step out of the hinterlands, I’d love to hike with you and share the joy of finding your way back to ‘You are Here.’ ‘He is Here’ too and He’s been waiting for you. He remembers the combination to your heart and your locker.
You can contact me here. I happen to know the internet works out in the hinterlands!
~ Nancy
P.S. To my family: I never snuck out during school. I did, however, sneak into town for my Ike reunion while you were out of town, had company, or were otherwise fully occupied. I cannot tell a lie. We had a good time 🙂
Photos courtesy of morgueFile and Pixabay free images
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