The Core

  I've been pondering more and more often what I want to do in life; there are places that I want to go and things that I want to see, but I often wonder what I am willing to do to achieve these goals. I sometimes dream about packing a small bag or two and setting out for Australia or Mongolia or Uruguay for an indeterminate amount of time, imagining that I will settle in one of these places and that will be the end of the travels. I'm sure that I would have a great time, but I know myself well enough to know that sooner or later I'd start to recreate my life of old. It would start with acquiring a book or two and soon I would have an entire shelf. An ancient oak desk would follow, a collection of pots & pans and a greenhouse would soon spring from the earth like mushrooms following fall rains. It would be the old me superimposing himself on the new me.
  Discovering this, I wonder why I have the yen to forge new trails? Would it be better to cultivate those fascinations that I already have and scale back anticipated treks into the unknown? It's an oddity in life that some of us constantly push to the background those things that make us happy, only to go on to things that we think might make us even happier still; new vista around and network in employ, we dust off those small boxes of former lives that we unconsciously carry around, unwrap the china contained therein and set about recreating a semblance of what we've left. It leaves me wondering if there ever truly were any of our species that boldly charged ahead...our forefathers may have left their homelands searching for new lives, but ultimately the majority chose to recreate what they'd lost or pine for what they no long had. For those that are inclined to disbelieve this, I put this question to you: what nationality are you? If you are from the US and not the bearer of a Green Card or a recent transplant, I suspect that 95% of you just responded with the nationality of your ancestors, not that you were an American.
  Why, I wonder, do we feel the need to rebuild and replicate that which we've either lost or voluntarily set aside? Are we so unsure about going forward that we need to constantly remind ourselves of what we've left behind? Thoughts?