End of Beginning

Much like the recently popular song, Chicago is for me in many ways the End of Beginning. It was from here I took off to Munich in 2013 for my first international venture. It was here I experienced my first real breakup and heartache. And it was here that I always felt I’d return to at some point in my life – like every good Midwesterner does. Chicago has indeed been a launching point for me over the years. 

Returning to the city now, I approach it with a sense of confidence and curiosity that I’m not sure I’ve felt before. I know who I am and what’s important to me, and I think I walk a little taller because of that. At the same time I also wonder where the journey goes from here. If moving to Chicago is the end of my beginning, what will define the next chapter? 

Over the years I’ve grown quite accustomed to a life lived in episodes. A couple years here, a couple years there – never fully sesshaft in one place – and yet always feeling that I’d at one point make it back to the Midwest. However now that I’m here I ask myself if settling in one place is truly what I desire. 

Part of the reason for this may be that moving around so much has itself become a routine for me. I know what to expect at the 6-month mark, how to put yourself out there and build a community, how to navigate setbacks in a new place when your immediate support system is minimal – like a shower that shocks you in your new, dumpy apartment. It seems that uprooting myself and starting anew has strangely become a comfort to me. And now that I’m finally here I’m afraid I won’t quite know how to settle and regrow my roots. 

I’m reminded of a quote by Hugh of Saint Victor which I’ve carried with me from one of my classes in undergrad: 

“The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.” 

Is this then what I’m to do? Is the next chapter learning to extinguish love for my home? I’m not all to positive I’d like to, but I certainly believe there’s merit in learning to see your home as one place among many, no better or worse, just different. 

Yet I also believe that I was largely capable and willing to pick up and move so often precisely because of my strong ties to home. No matter where I was or what I was going through, I always understood where I came from and what that meant for me. Not everyone is so lucky. 

I’m not sure of what comes next, but I do feel altogether excited and hopeful, like a plane taking off to a destination yet unknown. And therein again lies one of the truly beautiful things about life. It is random. It is often unplanned, and we don’t always know how things will turn out. The only question to ask ourselves is whether or not we embrace the moment. 

Chicago, I am ready. I am so ready.