I have left several lives behind.
Not just houses.
Not just businesses.
Not just relationships.
Lives.
Entire versions of myself.
For a long time, I thought this reflected some character flaw. An inability to settle down. A tendency toward reinvention. Restlessness disguised as courage.
At seventy-five, I am beginning to suspect something else.
I think I leave when I can no longer recognize myself.
That sounds dramatic, but the process is surprisingly mundane.
Nobody wakes up one morning and says, “Good Lord, I’ve become a smaller human.”
It happens gradually.
You stop laughing as easily.
You stop taking risks.
You stop imagining futures.
You stop extending generosity because you are spending all your energy defending yourself from something.
A place.
A culture.
A relationship.
A family system.
A community.
Sometimes all of them at once.
The change is so incremental that you mistake it for maturity.
You call it acceptance.
You call it realism.
You call it learning how the world works.
Years later, you discover you have been living on emotional rations.
What fascinates me is how little attention we pay to environments as active forces.
We discuss personality endlessly.
We discuss trauma endlessly.
We discuss genetics endlessly.
But environments?
Not so much.
As if human beings are somehow sealed containers carrying themselves through the world unaffected by the ecosystems in which they live.
Nonsense.
Put a generous person in an environment saturated with suspicion and watch what happens.
Put a curious person in an environment hostile to curiosity.
Put a joyful person in an environment devoted to grievance.
Put a resilient person in an environment that punishes independence.
Wait long enough.
The environment usually wins.
At least for a while.
This is not a condemnation of anyone.
One of the saddest lessons of my life is that many of the people I loved were adapting to the same environment I was.
They weren’t villains.
They were surviving.
So was I.
The difference is that eventually I left.
And once I left, something strange happened.
I began recovering qualities I thought age had stolen.
My health improved.
My curiosity returned.
My writing returned.
My sense of possibility returned.
Most surprising of all, my kindness returned.
That one hurt.
Because I had spent years believing I was becoming a harder person.
A sharper person.
A less patient person.
I wasn’t.
I was becoming a depleted person.
There is a difference.
The realization filled me with relief and grief in equal measure.
Relief because I wasn’t lost.
Grief because I started wondering about the people who remained.
I still wonder.
I wonder how many people are walking around believing they have become cynical when they are merely exhausted.
How many believe they have become selfish when they are simply depleted.
How many believe they have become old when they have actually become confined.
And I wonder how many doors we spend years trying to drag other people through.
That may be the hardest lesson of all.
You can describe the view from the other side.
You can point toward the opening.
You can hold the door open with both hands until your arms ache.
But every human being must eventually decide whether they wish to walk through it.
For themselves.
Looking back, I realize I spent much of my life paying attention to where I was going.
The next town.
The next business.
The next adventure.
The next love.
What I rarely considered was the cost of staying.
Not the financial cost.
The human cost.
The cost of remaining in environments that slowly diminished curiosity, resilience, generosity, courage, and joy.
The cost of becoming accustomed to becoming smaller.
As for me, I find myself on a ridge in Wisconsin, planting trees and building cabins at an age when sensible people are downsizing.
It is possible I have learned nothing.
But I suspect I have finally learned one lesson worth sharing:
Be aware of where you’re going.
But be even more aware of where you stay.
Because destinations shape our lives.
Environments shape who we become.
