Where We End Up!!

Over this past week I had an occasion to attend a business meeting with a friend of mine with an eye to doing some business out of town. The meeting was in Pittsburgh. Since my friend lived on the way, I picked him up at his lovely condominium located in Columbiana County. It is gorgeous unit in a beautiful development.

I have known my friend for quite awhile, and he is a mover and shaker. He started his career in Chicago, which his hometown. Staying with the same company, he was transferred to the Cleveland office, then to the Youngstown office, then retired and moved to Columbiana. He flies back to Chicago on a regular basis to visit his family, but he is one of us now. It struck me, as I walked through his gorgeous home, that is amazing how he started in Chicago, and ended up Columbiana.

I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. I like it here, and I like it here a lot. He does, too. That’s why he stayed. The point is, isn’t it funny where we end up…and how we got there? I think it would be a good guess to say that 50 years ago living in Chicago, Columbiana County, Ohio, would have been the last place my friend thought he would end up…good or bad.

Where we end up not only pertains to individuals, but to families. All four of my grandparents came from Italy. “We a gonna Yoongs-a-town,” my grandmother used to say. When she was 12, she moved from Agnone to Mulberry Street in New York City, then here. And here I am several generations later. Of course, now my family is spread out all of the country. My relatives have ended up in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Texas, after leaving “Yoongs-a-town.”

I am a great believer in life’s ebbs and flows. The late Joseph Campbell asked if you ever noticed how some people seem to have everything go their way. Things come easy to them. Other people continually struggle in life’s pursuits, constantly swimming up-stream. He said that life always provides us with a path, and we should follow our “bliss”. Do what makes us happy. Follow where life leads us. If you go with the flow of life rather than fighting it, doors will open up. Life will take you where you should be.

Did I think I would end up in Youngstown when I was twenty? No. I fully intended to move to New York or some other big city. Didn’t happen!! But when I look back on things, I can see that this is exactly where I am supposed to be. I look at the people I have met; the things I have seen and experienced; the things I had hoped to accomplish and those things I have actually accomplished; the lives that I have touched and the lives that have touched me. All of these have contributed to where I have ended up, and I am happy and thankful to be here.

How about you? Where have you ended up? Maybe it isn’t where you thought it would be…but when you get down to it, would you really rather be somewhere else?

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