"No Man Is an Island"

As many of you readers are aware, some months ago I relocated to upstate New York to the lovely small town of Rhinebeck in the Hudson River Valley. After 33 years in Hawaii and 10 years in Las Vegas, I felt ready for a new adventure and I had high expectations. In years past I had visited this area a number of times and found the natural environment beautiful and charming. However, I had neither friends nor relatives in the town and had only a brother 45 minutes away.

Big Cities and Small Towns

Perhaps I don't fit in as a small town person, or perhaps I don't fit well in the northeastern U.S. In any case at my age, and having lived 33 years in Honolulu, Hawaii and 10 years in Las Vegas, Nevada, I've had a difficult time trying to enter this small, traditional community. I've had trouble finding kindred souls and making friends to create a community for myself. I don't do "alone" well. I need good friends for stimulation and emotional nourishment - especially if I am having some health challenges.

Big cities have a lot of diversity: ethnic, economic, even international. I loved the diversity of Honolulu and Las Vegas, and I participated in a wide variety of different groups and activities. (During my life in the U.S. West, I had also spent considerable time in Vancouver, B.C. and San Francisco.)

However, small towns tend to be more homogenous, and I have missed the exciting diversity of bigger cities. It seems to me -from my research and observations, that most small towns are more traditional, more socially compact, and less open to newcomers from afar.

Legitimacy

I moved into this affluent community as a person who, while officially retired as a professor, is still active as a writer and speaker. In fact, I tell people I meet that I am "pro-tired," not retired. I have moved forward (pro) into a new chapter of life.

However, almost every person I've met in my age bracket has been really "retired." I learned that their interests were primarily health issues, recreation, and family, whereas my interests have been primarily intellectual, professional, and travel-related. These friendly strangers expressed little enthusiasm for my interests, and I was not very interested in their more structured and sedentary lives.

Thus, I didn't find a good fit.

(My friend Gordon Burgett. an expert on creative aging, has written excellent books on this topic, including How to Plan a Great Second Life. Why Not Fully live Every Day of Your Extra 30 Years? 2005)

If I had a professional position in a local institution, or if I had close family connections in this community, or even if I had been a long time member of a lodge, service club, or local church denomination, I would have had more legitimacy. Instead, I sensed that I have been seen as a retired professor and a newcomer, so I must pay my dues to earn my way into the social life of the town.

Support Community, Safety Net

I had a serious auto collision in late July and suffered some injuries. In the weeks after that accident I saw clearly that I lacked a true support system of family and friends in this area. I had only my son - 2 hours away - and a brother 45 minutes away. I had no close friends for support, and I was unable to get a physician to take me as a new patient. Without such support, I became discouraged.

I was in agreement with Oprah Winfrey who said, "Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to close it for us."

Last week a minister friend was visiting her college son at a nearby town, and she and I met for coffee. For two hours we had a deep conversation that provided both nourishment and pleasure for me. This meeting confirmed my decision to relocate to an area where I had such good friends. I had thoughtlessly taken for granted my old friends and thought I could replace them within a short time. But that could not be true. As my late friend and professor of psychology Abe Arkoff used to remind me: "Loren, yes, you can make a new friend. But you can't make a new 'old friend' with whom you have a long history."

Truth in the Stages of One's Life

During my lifetime I have lived in nine different countries and a dozen large cities. I was gregarious and made friends easily. As well, I spoke two foreign languages adequately (Spanish and Italian). However, as grew older, I had less energy for socializing than during my earlier years, and making friends in my own age group was more difficult than it was in younger years. I remembered this insight of Dr. Carl G. Jung:

"But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie."

Exactly so. What had been true when I was 40 or 50 was no longer true when I had become 70. As I grew through the stages of my life, my truths necessarily changed.

Examples:

Twenty years ago two retired professor friends from Oregon moved to Arizona for the climate. But after one year they returned to Oregon. Why? For the old friends and familiar places that supported their lives. Another friend from Hawaii moved back to his home town in Connecticut with his disabled wife "to be closer to my family." But what he had enjoyed during special holiday visits was not available on an everyday basis in ordinary life. He and his wife felt like outsiders in the very town in he was raised in. After 25 years away, he just couldn't go home again.

Fail Fast Forward

Author and management expert Tom Peters created the term for this approach:

If your approach isn't working after an adequate time for testing it, acknowledge the failed attempt and try something else. Above all, don't continue doing the same thing and getting the same results. Because I want to be part of a vital network of colleagues and friends, I have chosen to relocate once again and move back to "home territory" in Las Vegas. There I have dozens of good friends, four professional organizations I enjoy, and a church that guides me along my spiritual path. I am not a loner, and I must be with people I like and respect in order to thrive.

I often think of and say to myself these well-known lines of the poet John Donne (from Meditation XVII):

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

It is my plan to soon move and to re-connect with a continent of friends developed over a decade. I'll let you know how this all works out.