“There are two types of folks,” my mother used to say. “Nesters live in valleys and on the flats. Perchers prefer hillsides and mountaintops.”
Mom never went into detail about the concept but, as a young child, I had no reason to doubt her. I imagined the nesters snuggled into gentle valleys, enjoying security and comfort. I pictured perchers as adventuresome people who loved to sit atop the world and appreciate exhilarating views.
I assumed, until I hit junior high school, that our family belonged in the nesting category. First in Minnesota, where I was born, and later when we moved to San Diego, we lived in what I called ordinary houses in regular neighborhoods on mostly flat terrain.
The summer before I entered the seventh grade, we moved from our rental house in the old part of La Jolla, called “the Village” by locals, to the abode my parents purchased in the highlands, known as “the Muirlands.” We then had a lovely view of the Pacific Ocean, stretching to the horizon. Our new neighborhood seemed normal to me, except that the houses were all more modern than the historic, well-kept buildings in the Village. Life didn’t really feel any different to me than it had before we relocated.
“Are we perchers, now?” I asked my mother.
“We always have been,” she said, “at least in our hearts.”
***
Six years later, I graduated from high school and set off to create a life of my own. Over the years, I lived in cities, towns, tiny villages, and in the woods—always on flat ground or nestled into valleys. My folks, during that time, migrated from their Muirlands house into a series of lovely aeries in southern California, central Arizona and, finally, on a Nebraska hilltop. Whenever I visited them, I pondered Mom’s theory.
My assorted residences never mirrored my parents’ perches, yet I didn’t consider myself a nester. I chased adventure. I loved high places and expansive vistas, but I never had enough money to buy, or even rent, a place with a view. I came to realize that although some individuals might fit into my mother’s categories, those classifications couldn’t possibly apply to everyone because of a larger issue: class. Although newsreels abounded with shots of mountainside hovels in third world countries, in the parts of America that I knew, only the wealthy could afford to perch. I wondered how many U.S. “nesters” actually longed to live at higher elevations.
Thus began my decades-long contemplation of social issues and human values. Paying attention caused me to examine the structure of class in America and people’s underlying attitudes toward race, money, motivation, and status. I considered how my own education, travel, and exposure to people different from me affected my viewpoints and opinions about the world around me. I finally understood that as my life experiences broadened, my perspectives did, as well. I once felt afraid of people who didn’t look like me, until some of them became my friends, and certain other people, who did look like me, persecuted me. I realized, at a fairly young age, that I couldn’t pigeonhole people by their appearance.
Such learning is a continuum. It took me a long time to recognize that I’d “been had” by people who pushed narrow viewpoints and shallow assumptions—such as that there are only two kinds of people, nesters and perchers, and they are born that way. I am certain that my mother didn’t intentionally lead me astray; she just never really thought it through. I am grateful that I finally did think about it, in depth. After analyzing the nester/percher theory, I took a look at some of my other assumptions.
As an adventurer, I’d always admired the “rugged individualists” who formed the backbone of my childhood television-viewing preferences. The Bonanza cowboys who wore the white hats and the tough homesteaders like the Ingalls family on Little House on the Prairie personified these folks. These shows helped solidify in my young mind the not-necessarily-accurate belief that I could only be strong by going it alone and disdaining help offered by others. Over time, this morphed into a belief that government was bad and repressive—and only for sissies. It never occurred to me that someone (or a group of someones) wanted me to think that way.
Looking back, I believe that Ronald Reagan’s speeches about lazy “welfare queens” wasting tax money may have started my descent into these thought patterns. I distinctly remember declaring, to no one in particular, “I’d never even consider accepting welfare. I can survive on my own.” Up to that point, I knew nothing about how poor, single mothers struggled as they tried to make ends meet while keeping their children safe and healthy.
Later, I made no comparisons when I learned that many farmers and ranchers survived hard times with the help of government subsidies, and that big corporations largely paid no federal taxes due to government policies that favored them.
It took decades of traveling, working in various jobs, interacting with many people holding just as many viewpoints, and following the news on different platforms, before I finally began to analyze my life using a larger lens. I feel fortunate that my epiphany occurred prior to the current chaos in America. I wonder how many people today are at the same developmental stage as I was forty years ago. If it takes them as long as it took me to figure things out, we are doomed.
All may not be lost. We live in a different world today. Things seem to happen at a much faster pace, so perhaps life’s lessons are now more immediate.
Hope springs eternal.
#nesting #perching #Assumptions #perspectiveshift #hopespringseternal
Nester photo by Fabrizio Frigeni on Unsplash
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