Where You Are Is Where You Are

Our local places should be the centre of our attention - not the nation state or the world

Photo by Olivier Collet on Unsplash

Where you are is where you are. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Perhaps too simple, too obvious — or to put it bluntly — it’s blatantly obvious, isn’t it? But oh! how often we ignore that which is plain, simple, and familiar. When coupled with the passing of years, familiarity has the unfortunate habit of devolving into over-familiarity. This state of mind predictably gives rise to ignorance and the ‘invisibilising’ of that which is right in front of us — that which is obvious and should be well-known. And one of the many forgotten ‘right in front of us truths’ is the fact that where we are is really where we are — it is our home, our community, our place. Not over ‘there’, where the pastures may well be greener or life more exciting — but here in this specific place with these specific people, these unique buildings and streets, and these precious habitats and communities of species.

This is where we are.

I forget, sometimes, that Chelmsford is where I live and not London. It is an elementary mistake to make: the health and prosperity of Chelmsford should be my highest priority¹; Chelmsford’s news should be on top of my news reading pile; Chelmsford’s history should comprise many of the stories I hear and tell — and its streets I should often wander. But there is a problem: Chelmsford is pretty boring. Just ask Charles Dickens who once remarked: “If anyone were to ask me what in my opinion was the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the earth, I would decidedly say Chelmsford.” I may dispute stupid but dull I can heartily agree with — our high street is saturated with cut-out-copy chain stores, our cathedral is tiny and unimpressive (and has somewhat dubious claims to “cathedralship”), and most of the historic buildings have been stripped away to make way for hideous modernist shopping centres. A city made boring through stupid, short-sighted decisions and the ‘invasive dynamic’ of efficiency — welcome to Chelmsford².

London (a mere 30 miles south-west as the crow flies) is, on the other hand, saturated with history, grandeur, and prestige. It is the place where history continuously pours forth in the deals struck, speeches given, and laws established within the confines of this ancient metropolis. Breaking news of supposed ‘utmost importance’ regularly emanates from the prestigious streets of the capital, and old bookstores scattered around the city coupled with the many, many museums satisfy my curiosity with their well-stocked shelves full of ancient treasures and new discoveries. It is tempting, therefore, to make London the place where my mind lives, separated from my physical place-bound reality.

But I must come back to Chelmsford. For Chelmsford not London will always be home — even if (as it seems likely) I one day move away. I will always be a ‘Chelmsfordian’ at heart³. This small city, surrounded by lowland fields and ancient woods has shaped and cultivated me into the nature-loving man that I am — thus it should be obvious that London could not be my home. The small churches in this small city have made me love small congregations with close knit community, and even the boringness of the architecture and lack of tradition has had a positive effect in helping me to cherish and appreciate the small fragments of beauty when I find them. I am very much a born and bred Chelmsfordian.

But perhaps the most important reason I must return my gaze to Chelmsford is that this city, its people, and its wildlife lay a claim on me — a claim of responsibility which every inhabitant of every city, town or village has — to do good to the place you are in and one day leave it in a more convivial state than you first came to it. Where you are is where you are — and is where you must be⁴. As Wendell Berry wisely once said “Do you think it could be a general rule that the only place one is urgently needed is at home?” The more I have pondered these wise words, the more heartily I find myself answering “yes”.

---

It is worth repeating that by failing to realise, appreciate, and accept that we are where we are, we overlook what is right in front of us — the very people and things which should be of upmost importance. These are the objects and realities, the people and places, and norms and institutions that make up our every day. They directly influence our lives, and we, through the relationships and actions we form, directly influence them. The health (or otherwise) of our local community and local wildlife significantly affects and directly concerns us. We must realise that their health or degeneracy is, in part, caused by our local actions. Our responsibility for those things, peoples and creatures that make up our place should be obvious — bluntly so. These are the relationships by which our life will be judged, these are the places, buildings, stories, and habitats we will hand down to the next generation, and these are the places and things which bear our name. But, in this modern, rootless age we too easily forget this. And our eyes, oh, how they do wander…

Wander, they do, to where we think we primarily are (or more accurately, want to be). They drift to the greener pastures of elsewhere: to the lofty heights of the city lights — the places of importance, wealth, power (that make the 10 o’clock news, and the 5 o’clock, 2 o’clock and so on), or to the picture-postcard rural idyll, with the perfect community, perfect garden, and perfect cottage.

These are the places we wish we were, the places that we like to think would fulfil us or complete us, or at least provide more spark and life than where we currently are. Even if we do not wish to live elsewhere, the importance and power of other places catches our attention and concern until we become preoccupied with what happens “over there” and not here where we are. A good benchmark of ascertaining where our focus lies is to examine our news reading habits. Do we know more about what is happening at a global or national level than what is happening in our local community? Probably.⁵ Too easily then are we addicted what really does not concern us, that which we have not the power to change, and that which will be replaced tomorrow by more irrelevant but oh, so important sounding news.

Our governments and national corporations fuel this sense of ‘dislocated rootlessness’⁶ by eroding our sense of the local and replacing it with a national vision: “The national is all important” they say, “we all need to come together and grow our national GDP and we all need to come together to contribute to solving our national problems”. And if you haven’t got the message, posters paid for by the government will constantly remind us of our national-scale duties and the primary importance of our big economy-boosting cities.

They have been remarkably successful. For many of us, the national has supplanted the local in our imaginations and affections regardless of the fact that local concerns are more likely to match our own concerns, are concerns that more directly influence us, and finally are problems that we have the power to do something about. And the tragedy is that all this — the national governmental spin, the reprogramming and re-entering of our locational affections, and the centralisation efforts — goes on while the very policies our governments churn out at best neglect, or at worse, positively harm, our local areas in favour of those big-name players and big-name places in the national economy. Governments will rush to the rescue of a bank or a big city — but our local pub, the bulwark of the community and perhaps the only social meeting place for many? Forget it.⁷

But we mustn’t stop at the national level. When we listen to the global institutions, we find our responsibilities are even bigger than what our governments tell us. In our modern, hyper-connected world, we all need to play our part in the “the burden of world saving”. Our planet is under threat from economic downturn, climate change, ballooning poverty, and global diseases — and you, dear reader, are expected to play an instrumental part in saving it…

This, my friends, is a crippling and intolerable burden.