In my life, I have moved around a lot. In the last 15 years I have lived in New Orleans, New York, Nashville, Atlanta, Houston and San Francisco. Six cities, 8 houses, you would think I would be a pro by now, that moving would be easy for someone like me. But the truth is, each move is torture. So much anxiety, such a deep sense of loss. When my husband started considering a job in Chicago, I started the old, familiar, pre-move panic. But this time around I had a tool I had not had in the past –the Dharma. So between all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I began to consider what it was about an impending move that was so upsetting and to hunt down the wrong views that were causing me so much distress.

I started by considering past moves that had been particularly stressful. I tried to see if there was a common element — a house, a person, money, something that I worried about —  but, it was nothing so simple. Instead it boiled down to two main concepts:

1. Sense of belonging and identity in a place —
   1. When I went to college, I worked so hard to make friends, build an image, a reputation, for such a short time I was happy with what I had built, only to have to graduate and to let it go. I found myself severely depressed for the next 8 months.
   2.  I had actually never wanted to move to Texas, hated it when I arrived, but over my years there I built a connection with my Vajrayana religious community, when I left I was crushed and, in fact, almost returned after being in SF for less than 6 months.
   3. Here in SF I am enamoured with the idea of being an SF person, I have my job, my community, my day-to-day life all sorted-out. I don’t want to leave, this is my life, it is who I am…

Each place I have moved, I have felt like I belonged, like I was finally accepted, found a community, like I had become an Alana I always wanted to be. But, even with this thought, the lie begins to show through. Since being in SF my friends have changed, my neighborhood has changed, my religious community has changed, I have changed. If a city is about belonging, about being a certain Alana, how can these things have changed so radically while I have been here? Moreover, with each move, I retain many of the traits, relationships, sense of identity I built in the last place. If these things were so place dependent how can any of them survive a move?

       2)  Sense of stability, safety and predictability —

Which each move, I have been so devastated. Then, I proceed to fall in love with my new home as it become familiar to me. I  adjust, I adapt, my life takes on a certain pattern and in that pattern I see safety and  stability. The more I am able to settle into a routine, the more I feel I am in control, I can hedge against the scary, unexpected world that lies outside the structure I create –right up till my pattern is destroyed and its time to move again. The thing is, if New Orleans, or Texas or Atlanta or Tennessee had provided me with stability,  I would have never left.

My own experiences, my many moves, are evidence that a place, a routine, a community where I belong, simply can’t guarantee stability and predictability. Somehow though (despite 8 moves in 15 years) I think moving, loss of structure and control,  is an anomaly…

But, moving, changing, destabilizing are actually the nature of this world, they are woven into the fabric of my life. In fact, in many cases, these moves and changes are a consequence of my own choices, parts of tradeoffs I have made so I could get an education or stay married to an ambitious husband with a high powered job.

Moreover, when I really look back on all the things I didn’t want to lose, my friends in college, my Vajrayana community in Texas, my Dad in Atlanta — they aren’t even issues anymore. I wouldn’t want to hang out with most of my college friends now that I’m an adult, I don’t practice Vajrayana anymore and my Dad is long dead. So much suffering for stability that can’t be found, to preserve so many things that can’t be, that I wouldn’t really want to have, preserved….