"All You Gotta Do Is..." Probably Not the Best Advice

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

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One commenter’s advice spawns a conversation

Dear Reader: I decided to take this off the paywall because it really does speak to how our society is right now.

This article is in response to a comment offered on a heartfelt article I penned on trying to build community in the Pacific Northwest. One transplanted Yankee told me to move south, join a church and volunteer and I’d make lots of friends. As though it was that easy. Said commenter was born well above the Mason-Dixon line, and has lived in Georgia for forty years. The comment offered me a perfect opportunity to explore some larger points. Those of you who are, like me, born in the Deep South, will get this. Those of you who moved to the Deep South from the North and are students of place, you will also get this. I grew up a child of the South to transplanted Yankee parents: Forever tied to a region that never accepted my folks, and would never accept me, either, despite the fact of my birth. That said, the issues raised here are repeated in their own unique ways all over the country and the world, whether in my adopted PNW or the Eastern Seaboard or Southern Texas or the Montana mountains. It’s a long read, best taken in bites.

Here’s the original article:

With thanks to the original commenter for what I know to be a kindly-offered set of recommendations, this is my response:

Thanks for your suggestion to just move South, join a church and volunteer which will solve all my community issues. I recognize your perfect right to feel strongly about your adopted state of Georgia. I’m pleased you’re happy there. I would not be.

You said that you “don’t care that it’s beautiful” where I am. Well, I do; I went to a great deal of trouble and expense to move where I felt most at home in a physical place, and beauty has a lot to do with it.

As it does for many of us who move late in life, or at any time, if we are so privileged to be able to afford to move to a pretty place. If you wouldn’t willingly move to live next to an open air dump or a slum, you get my point.

Here are my reasons for disagreement with your sentiments, with links and explanations provided.

Just move to the South. As in, the Deep South:

Hurricanes, humidity, and heat

First, I despise the weather. The heat, the humidity, the hurricanes…no thank you. Such things work for millions of people. I vastly prefer cold, foggy, windy, moody weather. Such things also work for millions.

For those of us privileged enough to move where we are more physically comfortable, vive la difference.

Some of us like the desert, some of us would die for lack of the woods. Some can’t bear to be parted from the ocean; some prefer the ocean-like expanse of vast prairie.

Just because we like a place doesn’t mean it’s perfect for anyone else. I have lived through enough hurricanes to last me the rest of my days, both in Florida and later in North Carolina.

I lasted nine months when I took a job in the South after decades gone. It was a brutally horrible experience. I was reminded daily, painfully, why I had left.

It wasn’t just the weather, it was the infestation of millions of fleas in our rental. The fleas formed the welcoming committee and it went downhill from there.

I’ll take a cold, windy, blustery day on a deserted Coastline any day over a crowded, buggy, overheated beach. That’s one less towel a tourist has to step over to get to the waves.

Weather matters, which is why so many Northerners move south. They want to stop shoveling snow, among other notable improvements (but for the hurricanes at least).

Just join a church

Gallup data from 1988 showed 42% of Americans attended church weekly, consistent with the pattern of the preceding two decades.

Second, churches and I parted ways decades ago.

Forty years ago when you moved moved to Georgia, four in ten Americans regularly attended church. That ship has sailed for many good reasons. What might have worked then to join a community, build connections, find a marriage partner and the like is not likely to work the same way today.

Society has changed as it relates to churches and religions after too many children and vulnerable community members have been victimized, the crimes covered up, and church leaders willing to sell their souls to politicians for power, especially over the female or child body.

I will never be a believer, at least in the Christian sense. I’ve studied too many scholarly works, spent too much time in every manner of religious environment in 47 countries and have come out of all that a Buddhist. Not a religion, but a way of thinking.

Joining a church would be the height of hypocrisy for me. My value set aligns with basic principles, a set of human ideals by which we may lead good lives. All the great religions espouse them.

Unfortunately, espousing them and then demonstrating daily and consistent alignment with those principles are two very different paths.

The human politics, church-justified violence and utter depravity which inform too many places of worship today have soured us. In that I am in good and growing company.

For an excellent, lengthy, thoughtful read on religion, violence and the like, please see this terrific thought piece from Harvard.

Telling someone to join a church in a society where the institution is so steeped in scandals, coverups, sexual abuses and worse rather misses the point.

The point is to find a third place, not just a church.

While I decry the fact that the once-revered institution is so riddled with its own shit that religion has been kicked to the kerb by an entire society, the churches have only themselves to blame. Greed, perversion, dishonesty, you name it, the church, name your denomination, is likely wallowing in some kind of scandal.

That would include Buddhism, by the way, big time. The lure of power, money and sex is too much, and religions- and our trust in them- have suffered for it. You talk to a taxi driver in Nairobi and he will tell you he wants to become a pastor. Why? Money, power, women. Nothing to do with God.

But wait, there’s more. Let’s talk weapons. With guns proliferating inside churches these days I would hardly feel safe inside one.

To that from US Catholic:

Gov. Nathan Deal of the state of Georgia signed House Bill No. 60 allowing guns to be carried into bars, in some churches, schools and government buildings under certain circumstances. This bill, known as the “Safe Carry Protection Act” and sometimes known as the “Guns Everywhere” bill, is probably the most far-reaching of such bills in the United States.

The NRA applauded the governor, said it was a great day for the Second Amendment and praised the bill as the most comprehensive pro-gun reform legislation introduced in recent state history. House Speaker David Ralston said, “We are a community where we cling to our religion and our guns.”

Join a church and carry a gun because God loves us, nobody else. That means we can shoot first and ask questions later. Just saying. How Christian of you to kill without question and figure you’re cool with Jesus.

Church in Georgia? Not on your life. Because I might lose my life just by virtue of walking in the door at the wrong moment because some Johnny Reb warrior for Christ decides he doesn’t like the look of some immigrant seeking sanctuary. But wait! churches aren’t sanctuaries any more anyway, so goons with guns are just part of the bloody scenery, along with the blood of Christ.

Or my church might burn or be bombed because the KKK most assuredly has been infused with plenty of new money and energy lately. I have to wonder how many KKK members traded their hoods for ICE masks, but I digress.

Photo by Yohan Marion on Unsplash

Understanding place

Third, I have something you will never have: I was born and raised in the South. By that measure, I am what you will never be; a true Southerner. By birth, at least, if nothing else. I’ll get back to that nothing else in a moment.

What transplanted Yanks have difficulty understanding about the Deep South is simple: to those born and raised in the region, transplanted Yanks will always be transplanted Yanks, and never a full part of the community.

There are old Civil War angers, the resentment of being defeated by the North and stripped of the hugely profitable slave culture and the power of the plantation economy.

I perceive the South in ways only others born there understand it. The Deep South, at its heart, desperately wants its plantations back and frankly, for all the Yanks to go home. To not understand this is to not understand the region or indeed, Project 2025. That’s another story.

Forty years in Georgia is a lovely investment but you’re still outsiders. Joining a church and volunteering do not make you a local. Nor do they change the fundamental fact that you’re a Yankee, which for much of the Deep South is a crime beyond redemption.

You are politely tolerated, but for many it is little more than a veneer, under which there is simmering resentment.

Yanks will always and forever be outsiders in much of the Deep South. To not recognize this is to not understand the South.

From Google:

The perception of “Yankees” as outsiders in the Deep South is rooted in historical conflicts, stark cultural differences, and lingering resentments from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. This dynamic is less about simple geography and more about a deep-seated cultural identity and history that many Southerners feel is fundamentally different from the North’s.

Northerners will never understand the lure of the Confederacy, the symbolism of the Confederate flag and the simmering, century-plus long resentment that burns like a smoldering peat fire. That fire was just waiting for a despot like Trump to fan it.

That Sweet Southern “vibe”

I am glad you like the “vibe.” That superficial vibe is what lots of folks like: the slower pace, the waving Spanish moss, the humid summers and lush gardens, the formal courtesies often misinterpreted as genuine caring. Often it’s anything but.

Southerners know that “bless her/his heart” is a dagger used to soften the most vile insults, a putdown of profound power wrapped in magnolia petals. You’ve just been gutted and don’t even know it.

I left the South in my rear view mirror when I joined the Army at 21. The South will always bear a deep and abiding distrust of outsiders. If my daddy’s people didn’t know or grow up with your daddy’s people, then you are an outsider.

Forty years in a place is a drop in the bucket to those folks.

As one of my long-time readers Penny Nelson pointed out, the simple fact that she was a Yankee-transplant-to-Texas-and-almost-Houstonian who moved to nearby farm country for years made her an outsider to the rural folk. She understood that to rural Southern folk, the crime of being from the city, even a nearby southern city, was enough to make Penny’s family outsiders even if they had lived in the area for generations. She understands the South.

That’s very different from moving to the South and expecting to be accepted as you are, no questions asked. The questions and suspicions will always be there.

Those of us born and raised in that culture know those facts in our DNA. Outsiders never will. Time doesn’t make you an insider. Being born there does- but being born to people whose people go way, way, way back. That’s the vibe that transplants don’t understand.

This is not in any way a criticism; it’s a cultural idiosyncrasy. Under the veneer of progress, some things haven’t changed for centuries.

The South is broken into very distinct regions, each region has very distinct idiosyncrasies but one they all share: how the South feels about Yankees.

You’re a Yankee. You will always be a Yankee, and you cannot de-Yankee your birth by decades in Georgia.

Vibe or no vibe, where you are born is everything to those where I come from. The fact that transplants don’t seem to understand and respect that part of the culture where you have lived forty years is one reason why Southerners will always distrust Yankees.

Southerners feel invaded when northerners move down. That feeling is exacerbated by Yanks who don’t seem to understand the attitude, the culture, the history. The embedded racism. The feeling of yet another carpetbagger showing up to change their way of life, people who look down their aristocratic noses at Southerners.

Slow, stupid Southerners and a never-ending war

They deeply resent the assumption- and my parents were guilty of it- that Southerners are both slow and stupid. There was a very good reason that folks from Southeastern Texas to West Virginia were thought to be moronic, and that included white folks.

The culprit? Hookworms. Even as recently as the 1950s hookworms were a terrible problem. The infestation gave Southerners a bad reputation that has never lifted.

From that PBS story:

For more than three centuries, a plague of unshakable lethargy blanketed the American South.

It began with “ground itch,” a prickly tingling in the tender webs between the toes, which was soon followed by a dry cough. Weeks later, victims succumbed to an insatiable exhaustion and an impenetrable haziness of the mind that some called stupidity. Adults neglected their fields and children grew pale and listless. Victims developed grossly distended bellies and “angel wings”—emaciated shoulder blades accentuated by hunching. All gazed out dully from sunken sockets with a telltale “fish-eye” stare. (author bolded)

The outdoor privy was the beginning of the end of this terrible affliction, but not the end of the lingering lie that the South is full of lazy idiots.

I grew up with a mother who nearly glued shoes to my feet as we tore out the door. The fact that this was a medical condition that was finally brought under control never changed the overriding, brutally unfair characterization of Southern folks as slow and stupid.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but the lie endures. It is especially directed at Southern Blacks as a way of validating and perpetuating their “deserved” status as slave material.

The South has good reasons for being resentful. This is one of them. The Civil War is another. It’s still being fought. Most folks who move there truly have no idea that Johnny Reb is alive and well and has been stockpiling since April 9, 1865. Trump only let the dogs out.

Roots, in the South, spring forth from having been born from the soil of the South, and even more so, soil near their soil.

If my daddy’s people didn’t know your daddy’s people way on back, then you are not a Southerner. Never will be.

Let’s call it on the yard signs

Let’s just say the quiet part out loud: I’m a mostly blue voter, my parents were Civil Rights supporters and believed that Martin Luther King should have been President. No wonder they were ostracized. Much of the South would tar and feather me if it had the chance.

I’ve spent years and years in some kind of DEI work, which would have made my parents proud but makes me a sworn enemy of the much of the simmering South.

In today’s climate, it’s not a smart move to relocate where your politics would paint a huge target on your back.

It’s not just the South: it’s everywhere

Truth be told, this attitude of stick to your own, especially these days after Covid, with so many people moving to “better” states and countries for a variety of reasons (myself among them), exists everywhere.

Every small town and hamlet, large cities, neighborhoods- they all feel the same way. I’m just speaking to a specific situation I happen to personally understand. What I’ve outlined here could be edited to reflect uptown Manhattan, a suburb of San Diego, any mountain town in the entire Western United States.

The attitude is a human one, when people have lived in a place long enough to believe they own it, and that others who weren’t there as long as they have been are outsiders.

For example:

I moved to Colorado in 1971, was always and forever a “non-native.” I spent fifty years in that state. I would never be seen or accepted as a local. Colorado saw some five million outsiders move in during those fifty years. I felt invaded after a while, too. But Colorado was never “my state.”

There is no such thing. We do not own a place. The place owns us.

You see my point.

We all like to plant a flag in a plot where we’ve moved without bothering to truly understand the culture, history and temperature of a place.

We colonize and continue to colonize without realizing that’s what we’re doing. We move somewhere without bothering to be curious about what it means to be a local, and doing our best to fit in.

That makes us most unwelcome, all over the world, from the beginning of time. We want to believe that once we’ve moved to a new place we now “own” it and can dictate who else can be allowed in.

Even American immigrants in Ecuador have the unmitigated gall to write on Facebook that “Ecuador doesn’t want you Libtards down here.”

I’m sure that the Ecuadorian government might be surprised that some MAGA-hat has suddenly decided their immigration policy, but there you are. Asshats who think they own where they are are everywhere.

The South isn’t unique in this regard. Regional idiosyncrasies are embedded. Pretty towns and places like Vail and Breckenridge and Jackson Hole and Taos and Santa Fe which have been overwhelmed by “THEM” have similar attitudes: they feel protective of the unique culture and history of their place.

Their place was inhabited by Indigenous tribes centuries before they got there, but that’s an unfortunate detail largely left un-discussed.

I wanted to offer a perspective as inspired by some unsolicited advice from someone very close to my age. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the spirit in which it was offered. It was tone deaf.

Telling someone to do what you did forty years ago to make friends is like a Boomer intoning to a Millennial that “all they have to do is stop going to Starbucks and they’ll have money for a house.”

This landed exactly the same way. Covid, social media, social changes, fundamental political shifts and all the rest have rent human society in a thousand ways, making what used to be predictably good ways to create community utterly useless in too many situations.

Today, stark regional differences have been exacerbated by fear, distrust, political discord, and a deep desire to keep things as they are and outsiders out. Even when said “outsider” is from another neighborhood right down the street.

During times of transition, we contract our communities at the very time we so desperately need to expand them.

Let’s go large

We aren’t just a neighborhood or region in transition. We are a species in transition. It’s frankly terrifying. But hunkering down and being afraid of or resistant to new friends and experiences is no way to deal with it.

In fact, as William Bridges PhD teaches in his book Transitions, perhaps the single most effective strategy for moving through a rough period of change, which is a euphemism for the shit has hit the fan, is connecting. Especially with new and different people.

I made all the above specious, ridiculous, meaningless argument about the Deep South for a reason: not just to make a point about unsolicited advice, but to underscore how clinging to old identities limits who we can become. The advice was simply a bridge to demonstrate regional attitudes.

How hunkering down and hanging on tightly to ancient identities costs us terribly. The South’s culture and attitudes have resulted in some of the worst health and economic outcomes in the country. How that came about is a whole series of books on the topic.

Holding snugly to the ancient past as it rots under our grip has not been good for the South or for any other region. There is no way to “keep things the same” or “go back to the way we were.”

Speaking of denial, Miami keeps building on the coastline, billions of dollars invested in buildings as the sea level rises. Miami is a doomed city. The barrier islands of the Carolinas are doomed. Yet people keep building.

That is denial writ large, people who cannot countenance discussions with people who see and understand things differently. Those “others” threaten a way of life which is already over. Yet those very people might have answers to how we can proceed.

When we shut out new people with new vision and new ideas and new ways of seeing and being, we are dooming ourselves in much the same way.

We need different kinds of people in our lives, different kinds of conversations about what we need, different visions for what is, not what we’re trying desperately to preserve as our very foundations are crumbling under our feet.

So I’m going to end this with a challenge. If there are new people in our world, are we shutting them out with flimsy excuses of no time? When someone invites us to coffee or is clearly open to conversation, do we manufacture reasons out of thin air to avoid the opportunity?

When someone offers us a card and invites us to call, do we call, or drop the card in the nearest receptacle?

Then we’re part of the problem.

The church is no longer the answer. Volunteering is most assuredly part of what helps, but if you volunteer and no new friends spring out of that contact, then it’s still not community-building.

Being open to new friends, welcoming new people, pulling down the protective walls against newcomers and all that they bring with them is more likely to strengthen us for the future.

Let’s play.

Photo by E Hillsley on Unsplash

Thank you to all my regular subscribers and readers. Thank you for all the comments, the inspiration and the hard thought that your words inspire. As always everything I write pertains to me as well. Please consider