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Once in a while I forget where I am; or, I am in a place that is generic enough that it feels like it could exist in almost any context. Like, a path surrounded by trees can be found in many places in the world. Or a highway can feel like any highway in the country. For all I know, when I’m driving at midnight on Interstate 83, maybe I’m in Maryland, maybe I’m in Pennsylvania. Or maybe I’m not on Interstate 83 at all; when there’s no traffic and it’s dark, I could be on some highway in Tennessee.

But sometimes the cold reality of where I am hits me like a well-formed snowball.

Like the sign by the side of the road reminds me that I am on 83 in Maryland and that it is, indeed, thirty-three more miles back to York, Pennsylvania, the things of my hometown sometimes jump out to offer me a not-always pleasant reminder of where I am when I least expect it.

Case in point

I live in a strange place that desires in the best way possible to be cultured, and yet does not succeed in the least. It’s an area filled with factories of all varieties and surrounded by lots of farmland. There is a tiny arts community in there, if you look hard enough to find it.

So I was experiencing one of these fine moments when I wasn’t really thinking about where I was. I mean, I was in a hair salon and I knew that, but I wasn’t necessarily aware that it was located in the farmland region very far away from the tiny arts community, and I didn’t really care at the time. It was a Saturday morning and I needed to get my hair done; that was all.

By the time I sat down into a plastic chair to wait for my stylist, I had noticed that the salon was small and clean. Generic, really — nothing fancy, but nothing wrong with it, either. It was pretty early in the morning, and I hadn’t really wondered at the fact that both of the middle-aged male stylists were wearing hiking boots and faded, ill-fitting jeans. I also hadn’t taken too much notice of the television, which was set to a do-it-yourself program about laying gravel. Or of the circulating conversations between the other customers and the hair stylists, which involved motorcycles, backhoes, and their experiences with the aforementioned gravel. I was, however, a little concerned as to where — or who — my stylist was. Besides my friend and I, there were no other females present. I just couldn’t imagine hiking-boot-man being the one to style my hair for a wedding — nor did I want him to be the one, especially after noticing him eyeing us up unabashedly from his little corner not too far away.

No, none of these things meant much to me until after the snowball hit. The snowball arrived in the form of a sign taped to the wall. In big, bold letters, the sign proudly stated: “Frida and Co. Hair Salon invites you to the first company PIG ROAST! on Saturday the 20th. All hair products 10% off!”

I didn’t dare point it out to my friend, who wasn’t from the area. And though it made me laugh sardonically under my breath, it took a moment for the complete meaning of the poster to sink in. Where else could someone get some good roasted pig and a bottle of overpriced salon-quality shampoo at the same place? It was almost too contradictory to be true, but there it was — the well-formed snowball. And though I hadn’t had any coffee yet that morning, the snowball hit me so hard, I didn’t feel like I needed any caffeine after all.

It’s not that I don’t like where I live. It’s just that …

Instances like this make me wonder about the somewhere elses where there aren’t hair salon company pig roasts, and tons of farmland surrounding snack food and paper factories, and seedy Wal-Marts.

I don’t mean wondering about the somewhere else like most people do while sitting at a desk pretending to do work, but really dreaming about being “somewhere else” like “at the beach” or “in Florence”. I mean like that place where I would want to exist every day, where I would want to wake up and go to work and meet friends and go shopping. I mean where I would want go for coffee in the morning, the specific places where I would take walks, the roads I might drive on every day.

Where is that place, and why aren’t I there to begin with? Is there a place that I am meant to be in that isn’t this here and now? It’s an exciting thought, really, to think that I don’t even belong on the east coast. I’m really supposed to be on the west coast and haven’t realized what I’m missing, that the abundance of sunshine agrees with me more than I now realize. Or maybe it’s the Midwest; maybe I should have stuck with horseback riding lessons in high school. I could be raising horses on a ranch somewhere, breathing in cleaner air, feeling a lot healthier. Heck, maybe I’m not even meant to be in the United States. Somewhere in my family history, someone thought they weren’t supposed to be in Germany, or England, or wherever it was, and they sailed on over here. What if they were never supposed to leave? Where would that put me?

I excuse myself from asking these questions in anxious spurts. It’s part of human nature to be wondering about the “somewhere else”. The world is huge; who can’t help thinking about where else they could be … or end up?

But shouldn’t I be content with where it is God has placed me? I was told by one of my high school teachers whom I greatly respected that God won’t move us until we are comfortable with where He has placed us already. That was bad news for me at the time, and still is, since restlessness has had its way with me on a regular basis for as long as I can remember. No matter where I was, I wanted to be somewhere else, or felt like I needed to be somewhere else, or doing something else. And so I couldn’t take her point of view into complete consideration without also thinking: couldn’t it be that God uses restlessness to get us going? In stark contrast with restlessness, complacency isn’t a particularly admirable quality, either, and being too comfortable in one spot can lead to such a quality. It can lead to a life empty of ambition, and that isn’t going anywhere or helping anyone. So what should I do? It’s a toss up. Maybe I’ll try something and if it doesn’t work, I’ll try something else. I was told by other teachers that God opens and closes doors and windows, so there is more than one way to figure out where I should be going.

A lot of things in life aren’t meant to have conclusions

Hardly anyone has the means to travel to every place just because they might truly belong there. And so the encouraging and familiar phrases like “there is a reason for everything” and “make the best of what you have” become real and true and demand application until that perfect place is found, if it ever is — and if it even exists to begin with. Maybe I’m not supposed to go anywhere and will just have to fend off the snowballs forever. But that’s okay — I’d rather let the restlessness drive me than let the complacency keep me too comfortable. And if it takes a few snowballs launched at high speed to keep me that way, than so be it. I’m good at running away.

Illustration by Lacey Anderson.

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