"Bloom where your'e planted."

I hate cute little clichés like that. However, I must admit that there does seem to be some truth in that particular cliché. I was watching a show I had recorded on our Tivo, a show about the Amazon jungle, and the many tribes that thrive there. These people were planted there, and they have bloomed. They sleep on hammocks they've sewn from plant fibers, in houses made from local trees with roofs made of the leaves of those trees. Most, if not all, of these people know more about medicinal herbs than I will ever know. As much as I like my carpeted house, and computer, and Tivo, I wonder if these tribesmen would run from them, choosing their rural, primitive lifestyle over mine. I wonder if they would marvel at my ignorance of surviving without a grocery store or my inability to run through the mud and over rocks with no shoes. I have been planted here, in my suburban home, and this is where I bloom. I like my books and my Tivo and a tiled and rain-proof roof over my head. I don't like the rain. My friends don't like rain, and flee from it even to the point of bodily harm. Yes, I know fellow suburbanites who will risk breaking a rib running from the rain rather than walk through the rain carefully and arrive safely at the front door. My point, I suppose, is that we are who we are. I will never know what it is like to live in the jungle and have to hunt my food. The people of the jungle tribes will never know what it is like to be able to simply buy their food. I really don't foresee having to worry about keeping snakes and other wild animals out of my house. They don't worry about getting stuck in traffic. We are who we are, and we can only imagine being someone else, and let other lifestyles fuel our imaginations, and try to learn from others.