If you love your home state, should you leave it?

In which I respond to an email from my friend Chris about the difficult question of leaving California.

Granville Redmond was a California-based landscape painter. (Source: Laguna Art Museum)

No. 87: If you love your home state, should you leave it?

Matt!

Always a pleasure to read your weekly. This one struck home with me, as I’ve been a California boy my entire life. Sure, I’ve traveled and stayed in places in the Midwest and East Coast, but there really is nothing like California. 

This has been at the forefront of my mind recently as I:

1. I realize that when I go off to medical school I may not have the ability to stay in California. 

2. As I get further into dating this amazing girl, Kayla, who is currently in school in Minnesota, I feel the need to leave home base to be close to her. 

Each of these circumstances excite me about the thought of living somewhere new, but also frighten me about leaving the beautiful homeland, and only land I’ve known. 

The point you bring up about feeling the ability to love more wholly while in California is something that resonates with me. I too feel like the cold Midwestern winters and lack of ocean and other soul feeding things that California offers may lead me to be in a similar situation. However, I won’t know until I take off on wherever this life journey takes me, but I’m happy to know there are likeminded California’s out there with the same feelings. 

Chris 

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Chris, 

It sounds like you're approaching a similar juncture to the one I found myself at half-a-year ago. I've been thinking about how best to reply to this. My first reaction is to write confidently about all that I've learned and give you some comforting answers. But, truly, I have nothing concrete to offer. At least, nothing better than: it all depends.

With things like these, and with most things, I think the best we can do is admit that we don't know and probably never will. In the situation you described, there are two things you want.

1. To stay in your beautiful home state of California

2. To leave and see what else it out there

The question that follows? Which of the two do you want more? You don't know, I don't know, no one knows. 

This leaves you with one option. Do one of the things and (maybe) find out.

So which seems like the bigger adventure? Which is filled with more unknowns? Which will push you out of your comfort zone? Which will provide you with brand new experiences? 

This is how I ended up in Illinois, and how you also might end up outside of the golden state. And you wouldn't be doing it for the hell of it. Going off into flatlandia alone might pose some serious risks to your happiness and mental health. I still marvel at the strength of people who do exactly this, whether immigrants or transplants. They pack their bags and leave for someplace new without connections or a support system. Bold. Much bolder than I am, who left knowing the place I was going was the same place my girlfriend grew up and where her family still lived. You have a lady that you love in Minnesota. You have medical school prospects. Time is on your side if, God forbid, everything falls apart. If there's a time to jump off a cliff, now seems as good as any. 

Something else I've confirmed since moving? Emotions are far too complex for words, or even ideas (which are framed by words). I constantly battle with the idea that I love California and that it's the place for me. This automatically implies that Illinois is none of those things. That's not the case. I believe all I wrote in the newsletter you mention, but I also wrote that while in California and punch-drunk on the state's beauty, the bike rides, the food, the people, and the nostalgia of the home place. As I sit here on a calm Sunday morning, sipping a cup of coffee in the kitchen of my house, surrounded by my books and magazines and puppy dog, with Grace at work but coming home soon, and with plans to make some steak and eggs, go on a walk, a continue a novel I started last night, there's no place I'd rather be.

Is this always the case? No. I'm a moody dude. I fluctuate. I think that's normal. 

But I'm happy now. I usually am. And it may be cliché, but it seems that happiness should be a feeling we can (mostly) self-produce. Getting away from a place that contributes to your happiness challenges that.

Again, it's a risky maneuver. But if you can pull it off, you’ll be in excellent shape, more resilient and more prepared for all the changes that will inevitably come later in life. And once you make a jump this far from home, what's to stop you from going further? There’s this place I visited in Italy once. They had fantastic mortadella sandwiches.

All the best, 
Matt