What makes a happy life? Is it something inside of you or is it all environmental factors that d etermine whether you are contented or not? I've thought about this a lot as I hope all of you have. And I've decided that its a little of both. First, you must have a recipe inside you that allows you to be happy if the right ingredients are supplied.
For me one of the most important ingredients in my recipe is where I live. For me, I've discovered that the perfect location is Indiana. But like so many things in life, I only learned how important it was to me being away from it.
I left Indiana whe n I was 23 years old. I moved away ostensibly because my soon-to-be-husband and I had decided that he should take a job that required us to move out of state. However, I believe that one of the main reasons I left was that I was following the chain of sep aration that pulled me from my original county, my home town and in the very beginning, my mother's womb.
This was a time when all things Hoosier annoyed me. I felt that my small home town was tottering on the brink of the earth. I didn't want to loo k at cornfields. I hated the twang in the voices that I heard.
First, we moved to Columbus, Ohio. It wasn't a far move but at least it was out of state and in a city. We got married and became yuppies. We found a group of similar-minded friends. We ha d great parties. Mark and I both had good jobs, no kids and lots of extra money. We bought a nice house. We had a lot of fun.
We spent five years there before Mark was offered a better job in Sturbridge, Mass. We decided to go and I was glad. Columbus was okay but it was still the Midwest. The terrain was the same. The people were Midwestern people. I wanted a real change.
Living in New England was different. We lived there three years and there were many things that I liked about it. I enjoyed be ing friends with people who came from all around the world. I liked all of the cultural opportunities. I appreciated the varied terrain. There were oceans and mountains and lots of clear blue lakes in between. There was so much history. There were so many interesting sites to visit.
We traveled all over New England. Here, too, we were DINKS. (Double Income No Kids). In other words, we had plenty of extra money and very few responsibilities. We would hop in the car on a Friday night and pick a destinat ion for the weekend. We went to the Cape and hiked in the Green Mountains. We visited Mystic Seaport and we climbed Mt. Washington. I carry a load of happy memories of adventures from those years.
There were also many things that I began to notice tha t I didn't like about living in Massachusetts. The winters were long and harsh. It seemed like the inhabitants had tailored their dispositions after the weather. I found New Englanders to be wary and hard to know. The pace of life is fast and stressful. P eople drive like maniacs both on the highways and in the workplace. I didn't want to become just another rodent in the rat race.
As the years past, I became increasingly homesick. I realized that what I was rebelling against wasn't all that horrible. How could I run from a childhood full of warm, happy memories and a truckload of people that loved me? I remembered all my barefoot summer days full of sparkling childhood treasure: tangles of blackberries in the back of an old field, feeding an old horse handfuls of fresh grass, collections of hickory nuts, home-made ice cream on the 4th of July surrounded by more people than I could count and all of them were related to me.
That is when I knew that I wanted to live in a place where I wasn't an outsi der. My ears ached to hear big-haired women call me honey. My fingers longed to touch soft, faded bib overalls. My eyes hurt to see Indiana in the spring with the freshly-turned soil just as black as a Nubian's skin. I yearned for the smell of Indiana su tal truck. Now the cornfields looked like a promise of fertility. The brown earth under my feet relaxed me. The gentle, easy scenery was more beautiful to me than any of the show-off spectacular vistas of New England.
I have been back for seven years. I live 17 miles from my home town. I am close to my family and they help me raise my children. I enjoy the rhythm of the seasons the way that Indiana does them. I like the town where I live. It is the town where my grandparents lived and where my mother was born. Sometimes when I walk through the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, I feel so centered. I know that I'm in the right place.
I am glad that I was able to live away for awhile. Having those memories of other places is a treasure. Bein g alone and reliant on only each other helped Mark and I build a strong foundation for our marriage. But I think the most important thing I learned from being away is how much I love Indiana and how the days that I've spent among its borders have been the happiest of my life.
In conclusion, I have analyzed my recipe for happiness and know clearly one of the ingredients. I now encourage each one of you to do the same. Take a look inside and outside and tell us what you see.