Kerry Smith McKenna

It's tempting to say "I love LA" when asked. That's the answer that people want to hear, even if they expect to hear complaint about the traffic. We assume any place is easy to love if your basic needs are met--a job, apartment, friends and fun things to do.  But is that always the case?

The quest to really enjoy where I live is to understand and achieve basic needs. Some needs are simpler than others, some needs are more important to fill based on experience.
For my part, basics include reasonable rent, commute distance to work and groceries, home security and diversity in the neighborhood.  Basics also include a coffee shop with good espresso and ambiance. Once these are in place, what makes me feel at home? In all the places I've lived--city and town, country and overseas--it boils down to two things: The underlying earth energy and the people's collective focus or attitude.  Everything else is negotiable if I feel a sense of belonging to Place. Does LA do this?

 Oddly enough, I can feel earthquakes and magnetic disturbance, but somehow I can't feel the energy of the earth here, or haven't identified it within me yet. I suspect that some people are drawn to the desert and some are drawn to the plains, and some to rocky, rainy coastlines.  I suppose I'm not a desert dweller, for all its beauty and sunlight because I don't feel I can sink in.  I'm rebounding off of a hard surface here.  The effort put in by the hardy succulents and cacti are reflected in people's effort in their careers clinging for foothold into “The Industry”.   Entertainment, of course, creates works of creative fiction out of the sheer struggle to survive the business itself.  For some thousands of people, this is appropriate and makes their lives hardy.

But for me, a feeling of being nurtured, embraced by a lush, more feminine nature is missing.  And though diverse, with coffee shops, libraries and buses at my doorstep, the people's collective focus is exhausting and I don't share it.
Is it okay, I ask myself, to just prefer an easier path and a softer ground?  To flow downhill and finally give up pushing boulders out of my way? Yes, of course.  It's where preferences and free will take over from basic needs met.  In my 43 years of life (this time around), I feel I have finally defined what I require from a place, and that itself means I now must find that which will nurture me.  I'm discovering my ultimate challenge in life:  To be my own advocate in finding the support of nature's energy, a higher power, and others to whom I can be like family.