Finding Myself

Where am I?

As of this moment, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, typing this blog posting.  Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is playing in the background, making everything I type seem slightly more dramatic than it deserves to be.  The kitchen seems to be the place in the house where everything happens.  We have our meals here, we do our homework here, we play games here--it’s the central hub of activity in the Carnoali household.  And it shows.  The floor is marked up with scratches made from years of broken dishes, cat fights, furniture arrangement, and just the general traffic in and out.  I love my kitchen.  It has a sort of country look with just the right amount of Carnoali flavoring.

I am in my house.  My old, farm-style, white walled house sitting on top of a high, green hill.  As far as I’m concerned, our house is perfect.  It’s been the base of all our memory-making over the last 17 years.  We set up obstacle courses in the living room and created our very own marching bands in the office.  I know every inch of it.  I know which stairs creak and which ones are safe, I know how many steps it takes to get from the kitchen to my bedroom and exactly where the hallway turns, even in the dark.  I remember each animal we’ve ever had and where they’re buried in the yard.  When I was little, I wanted to move.  I thought our house was dull and ordinary.  I took me a couple of years to learn that this house was exactly what it was meant to be.  Just because I’d seen everything there was to see and done everything there was to do, didn’t mean the adventures were over.  I now realize that it’s precisely in the moment when you have seen everything that you start over  You make new memories, until the place which had seemed so bland and tasteless before was now veritable treasure trove of excitement.  This isn’t just a house anymore, it’s a home.  And when I leave and move on with my life, I hope I will still look back on this place with fond remembrance.

I am in my town.  I say my town because if I named the place that I am physically in at the moment, I wouldn’t have much to write about.  My mailbox says Hampton.  My heart says Aurora.  Ever since I began school there in seventh grade, I’ve loved it.  I love the square and the restaurants.  I love the unique little businesses that you won’t see anywhere else.  I love the town’s spirit at football games and at festivals like Auroran Days.  Everyone seems to care so much about the town’s well-being.  I love the fact that we have museums and exhibits proudly explaining where this town came from and what it’s doing.  When I was in fourth grade I went to a small Lutheran school in Hampton.  My brother, I knew, was attending Aurora the next year and, for some reason, I was under the impression that Aurora was a huge, scary place which would swallow you up if you weren’t careful.  I dreaded going there, too scared to imagine what would become of me if I went to, as I saw it then, the big city school.  By the time seventh grade rolled around, however, I was set.  I had my head on a little straighter and was ready to move up in the world.  I can’t imagine ever doing anything else.  Aurora is where I spend most of my time with my friends and for school activities.  It is my home now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I am in America.  Although some people may see it as typical naivety, I know for a fact that I live in the best country in the world.  I love the way we were founded, I love our culture, and I love our philosophies.  I actually love the cocky arrogance that Americans seem to have.  It makes me feel like there is a sense of pride that Europeans can’t wring out.  America will always be my home, even if I leave it for a while.

I am on the Earth.  I am on a vibrant, beautiful, diverse, beautiful planet that is taken for granted too many times.  It was only a few years ago that something shifted inside my mind and I decided that I wanted to see it all.  I live in the most miraculous place we know of, and suddenly I didn’t understand why I was planning on staying in the same small portion of it for my whole life.  There’s so much out there, and I want to breathe it in, to embrace it and perhaps change it for the better.

I am in the Universe.  Or at least, I watch the Universe, staring up into heavens from the limitations of my back yard.  It taunts me, dangling unknown wonders just above my finger tips.  It’s the one thing we will never reach.  Not in my lifetime, at least.  So I am forced to watch only, to window shop for the greater things of human existence.  Compared to the Universe, the Earth is so tiny.  It makes me wonder where we fit in in this wide expanse.  Is there something else out there?

If so, where is it?  Where are we?  Where am I?