Normally we think about an epiphany being a sudden rush of insight. Of course sometimes they are. But others are more the result of a long and silent process that has been working away internally. It’s not an eruption or a blinding flash but pieces of a puzzle coming together.
I was in a dark theater watching a performance of “Over the River and Through the Woods.” It is a play by Joe De Pietro, and a friend John Kelly played the lead character. De Pietro scripts the poignant story of an immigrant Italian family in New York whose grandson Nick has made a decision to move away – far away – to Seattle for his work. The central conflict is the struggle between desiring a personal identity and life separate from family and the reality that our lives are entangled with theirs.
In my conversations with young people this is the first issue that comes up. How do I renegotiate my relationship with my parents? How can I encourage them to turn loose of me and me of them?  For the grandparents in the play their commitment to family is the source of their identity. There is no such thing as an identity outside of family. Time and again they use the phrase “tengo familia” (I have a family) to describe what it means to have and to be held by family. It’s the primary relationship in life and to take care of and be cared for by family is the basis of a life that is satisfying.
Yes it is partly generational, but it is more than that. It is the struggle many of us have between taking advantage of opportunities and still being anchored in relationships that constrain us. How much do we owe the people who love us? How much of us belongs to them? How much of ourselves are we willing to give up to belong to family?
Sitting there, I remembered a quote from Wendell Berry’s book Jayber Crow: “And so I came to belong to this place. Being here satisfies me. I had laid my claim on the place had made it answerable to my life. Of course you can’t do that and get away free. You can’t choose it seems without being chosen. For the place in return ” had laid its claim on me and had made my life answerable to it.”
I didn’t understand the value of belonging when I was younger. I was always ready to move on. My bag was always packed, and the adventure of the next experience was irresistible. Maybe it had something to do with sharing my father’s name but making a name for myself kept me pushing out. I did not appreciate as I do now what it means to belong to a place or to have a place and people who lay their claim on me. While I don’t think I could have done it differently, I am grateful I have been given this opportunity – the opportunity to belong and to be satisfied in being here.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S Eliot