place is important

I was following her around, as she shopped for dinner. It was a scene that’s been played out in many different occasions, in many different towns, over the last two decades. I’ve followed her around grocery stores all around this country, and I’ve been happy to do so.

I probably should have been helping her find the items on her list. After all, she was making a special vegetarian dish for me. Instead, I was watching other people in the store. It’s a favorite pastime of mine. People fascinate me, and I love observing them.

This particular day, however, I was surprised by what I was seeing. After observing people for awhile, I sidled up to my friend and said in a low voice, “They all look alike.”

“What?” she asked, looking up from reading a food label.

I leaned closer and lowered my voice even more. “Everyone here looks alike!”

“I know,” she said calmly. “Isn’t that scary?” She went back to reading her label, as if this were nothing out of the ordinary.

At that point, I started observing people more closely, trying to figure out this puzzle. She and I were in the town where we’d met, but neither of us lived there any more. I’d moved away with my family in high school, and she hadn’t lived there since she’d gone off to college.

I spent the next few minutes observing everyone I saw, trying to put a finger on what I was observing. Finally, I said to her, “It’s not that they look exactly alike. It’s that they all have a similar attitude and a similar style.”

“Umm” was the indistinct response I got. She was more interested in the produce.

“They all look defeated,” I concluded. And they did. I don’t know if defeated is exactly the right word, but they definitely didn’t look happy. Or even content.

As I looked around at these people who looked so sad and defeated, the one thought that kept coming back to me was: Place is important.

A few days later, she and I were in her home, in a different town. “I’ve found my home,” she said, with certainty in her tone and in her expression.

“I know,” I said, smiling. Once again, I thought: Place is important.

Now I am back in my own home, looking out my window at snow-covered mountains and the sun shining on the water. And I’m thinking: Place is important.

It’s something that I’ve thought before, but have recently ignored. I have a lot of training, Buddhist and otherwise, that has led me to concentrate on my own internal thoughts and dialogue. It’s taught me that my reactions to places are more important than the places themselves. The internal is far more important than the external, in terms of happiness, well-being or satisfaction.

Yet I’m beginning to understand that the external can (and does) matter, too.