"Nothing changes inside us because of a change in landscape."
--12-step program (Alcoholics Anonymous, et al) proverb, commonly heard at the meetings.
One day, it happened that I noticed I was living permanently in a beautiful place, in an area of town I adore with all the elements of my dreams of such matters, dreams going back to the middle 1980s and beyond. In fact, that day is today, Christmas Eve at my home, and all is well with everything, including my family and health. As usual, I did not take the time to truly appreciate what I had come to in my life. I looked around me and was astounded that I had, in fact, succeeded in this area of my long and eventful life. I was living my dream. I had arrived.
But...
I wasn't very happy at all. I was at the perfect geographical location, and I still was eaten up inside by many things, mostly negative emotions related to my past. Leave town, again? Where could I go to, to relieve the pressure of having to actually continue to stay sober? To a more "tropical" area, so I could sleep out at night? Back to my home town, so I could answer Rosanne Cash's question: "...so who does your past belong to today, baby? Across the globe to the Philippines, so I could learn Tagalog?
And so, the point is:
It doesn't matter where you are living; what matters is how you live in that world. Also, no matter how successful you are in your life, no matter your sobriety, you will still experience the full range of negative emotions-and human malevolence. You will still need to stay sober, and that should be easy enough after continuing practice, no matter where you are.
