On Home, Location, and Permanence

So today I registered to vote in Virginia.

Shocking, I know.  Because it's not like I care about Virginia politics.  (That was sarcasm.)

What that really got me thinking about, though, ties into a concept from class yesterday.  Historically, we think of location as permanent, and a home as a sense of permanence.  This came up as we were talking about how census data and the people who research it conceive of location -- in a way that doesn't account for frequent movement, especially in areas for poor or migrant families.

And today, registering to vote in a state that I do not think of as "home" although I also no longer live in the town I think of as "home" (as in it is not my current permanent or temporary residence), made me think a bit more about permanence.

I moved around a decent bit growing up.  Not like the army brats in movies who move to entirely new cities every six months and never get their roots -- I never had a problem establishing a sense of home in a general sense.  But changing circumstances led to a lot of literal moving: between one parent or the other, the amount of time I spent living in the same room in the same home was pretty limited after I was about six.

Now that I've once again gotten some sense of settled, here in Richmond, I'm already preparing for the likelihood of being somewhere else for graduate school, and my sense of permanence and stability is once again pretty shaken.

Most of the moves I have made in my life have been the result of conscious choices -- new relationships/marriages, going away to school, etc.  Yet they still impact my ability to think of a plot of land or building or physical location as a stable point that I can call "home."  I can only imagine what it must be like when even the sense of home that surrounds a group of people or family has gotten taken away, and the need to move is prompted not by choices but by circumstance.  With how much we consider home and location a part of our identity (my family, the fact that I'm a "Yankee" going to school in the South), it must be hard to craft a sense of identity when you're pushed away from a feeling of home.

Locally grown,
Rachel Leigh

On R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I've been thinking a lot about respect recently.  It started with a video about the influence of teachers and made me think about why I respect those who have taught me and why others fail to respect them.  I've thought about respect for feelings and respect for boundaries.  I've thought very deeply about respect for king and country (or, well, I mean, I don't live in a country with a king, but I think you know where I'm going with that).

I've thought about what it takes to earn my respect.  If you do not treat me like a child, I will respect you as an equal who deserves the adult they have deigned to acknowledge.  If you accept that I have clear boundaries -- physically, emotionally, psychologically -- then I will respect that their are lines that you may also not want me to cross.

But those are the things it takes to earn my respect.  And I've also started to wonder if that, too, is a flawed concept.  Because in expecting you to respect those needs, the only reason I can cite is that I am a full, complex human being, deserving of respect.  But then so is everyone else: full, complex human beings who, while I may not understand their positions, have reasons and origins as complex as mine and just as deserving of being respectfully heard out.

And, I suppose, what I've come to is something of a middle.  On the one hand, I feel like there are positions and opinions undeserving of respect.  On the other, however, people are not simply their views and opinions.

What I guess I'm trying to say is that, while I have always seen respect as something earned, I'm beginning to question if that's the right way of seeing things.  Does respect for a person have to entail respect for their beliefs or choices?  If not, are there people undeserving of respect?

I'd be lying if I said I knew.

Thoughtfully yours,
Rachel Leigh