The grass isn't always greener

It's easy enough to get distracted in this life, I should know, I've spent half my days looking past this little thing or that one, in search of something better. Every once in awhile I caught glimpses of greatness that made me shake my head and ask myself what it was that I was really looking for. Now I stare out into these Lake Huron sunsets and I wonder what it ever was I was chasing? We spend most of our lives making decisions and never ever knowing what the end result of those decisions might be. Both June and I always thought that we'd end up a long way from where we were from, and now here we are, on the edge of water and sky, a scant 45 or 50 minutes down the road from that place where we grew up. If I'd never seen this place in my life...if I'd never grown up so close...I'd swear this place was as close to everything I needed as I might find. Familiarity breeds contempt.

There's this lake in my backyard that might as well be an ocean, it's so big. There's another country five miles away. There's a large metropolitan center no more than an hour away...a city with world class entertainment, sports, and an airport that allows me to fly anywhere in the world that I might want to go. Here I can own a home and a boat and I can leave whenever I want and afford to go anywhere I want. I can afford to dream here. You can't do that in a lot of places.

We have the support of family close by. We have old friends close, and as good a potential for finding new friends as anywhere else on the map. I can make plenty of excuses here but the fact is that I'd have to actually make them, there's really no need for excuses here. There could be more opportunity, sure, the kind that a city offers, but then there'd be more competition for resources too. It could be better, but could it be that much better, really? You pay an awfully high price for better, and really, what are you getting that I couldn't find with a little effort? It really comes down to what your version of better is.

The point is that it's more than just sunsets that keep us here. We're starting to realize that.