ROOTS OR ANCHORS

June 18th, 2018

To put down roots.  This is a pretty common phrase.  To ‘settle down’, have a home, start a family.  All that.

I contest the roots part.  Especially today when nearly everyone can get on a plane or two and hop around.  Just a hundred and some years ago, travel was a big endeavor.  Now it can happen on a whim. 

It’s perhaps useful to remember that our ambulating species was a restless, wandering, nomadic migrating people much much longer than we have been sitting wheat-eaters.  The adoption of the word ‘root’ in light of the agricultural revolution is perhaps even more fitting.

Though more has happened since.  And the hunt is clearly still on our minds. 

The anchor is a better metaphor.  The quaint idea of growing up and living in the same town for a whole life is quickly becoming a nostalgic ‘once upon a time.’

We move.  And while the wanderers might be said to drift, we all have an anchor we can drop.  A movable root.  And isn’t this preferable, if not also more accurate?

A storm comes, we can set our anchor against it.  Or.   Slip cables and run the winds, all the while carrying with us the chance, the tool to sit and stick when the place and time are right.  For how long?  It’s pompous to say. 

The weatherman is far better at his job than we are at predicting the future.  But that doesn’t mean he’s good at his job.