My DNA likes my home. I don’t want to move. Once I found a home, it’s my home and I have lived there over 20+ years and I don’t plan on moving. The neighborhood and the city can change, but I like having the same place. I am so not nostalgic to anything else in my life, but my home is my home.  My kids grew up here, I grew mature here.  And now that I am back at my parent’s home I see where this comes from.  They live in the same place they bought 40+ years ago and they have never wanted to change.

40 years is a long time. The brown in me, began playing soccer on this field 40 years ago.

The field is in better shape, and they added lights and fences.  Progress in our modern world is all about restrictions.  When I was a child we all played here and shared the field.  Now the field is not available to children without a rental agreement.  Still owned by the city, but now controlled.

The humanist way would be to have more fields, instead we have less use.  How many of you can go back to your home city 40 years later and see no change?  Change is expected, however you would hope its for the better.  Most cities have gotten bigger and more crowded.  Thus I should be happy there aren’t any condominiums on this land.  In driving around my old neighborhood I see less kids playing in the park and even less parks for them to play.  I use to laugh at my parents when they use to tell me nostalgic stories of how great Africa use to be in the old days.  Then when I first went, at an age where I could remember, it was not magical or great as they describe it. It was noisy, dirty and crowded.   I believed the nostalgia was creating a false memory.  Everyone believes the those were the good ole days.

Now the roles have switched, I come back and see this city has quadrupled, yet the good things are gone, and the bad things remain.  The neighborhoods are still segregated. In Canada its not black or white, its economic mostly, then its educational, then its immigrants vs non immigrants. Sure parts of the city have been changed and modernized, but they have also displaced a lot of people and replaced them with a different class.

I guess I am the one now telling stories of the good ole days and my kids and grand kids will come and be surely disappointed.  Some one mentioned to me, you can’t go home. They are right.  You also can’t go back. Life moves on like the river…. it will keep flowing.  My own city is changing and my children already rue over the change.  It’s inevitable.  So whats the brown in me secret? Don’t get attached, live for the moment and create your own place to fight the time.

Source: ItsTheBrownInMe