I don’t belong here – Jep's Place Sweden

I don't belong here - jep's initial inspiration

When Jep was young – and that really is a long time ago – he always cycled through town to school.

“I don’t belong here,” he thought one day, “I don’t belong among these stones, these buildings, this asphalt, these people.”

He thought it was too crowded then, too much traffic, too little nature. Too far from his nature.

But Jep went to school and did what was expected of him. Like a chameleon, he adapted to his environment. He did well, and it made his environment happy, so what more could he wish for.

And yet it kept coming back.

“This is not right. I don’t belong here. ”

Would there be others who felt the same way? It didn’t look like that, he never heard anyone about it. Could it be that he wasn’t normal? Would he be crazy?

He decided to pretend he belonged here and adjusted. Usually he forgot all about it and thought that this was his life. That this was okay, because it seemed to be right for everyone else.

And somewhere in that ordinary, adapted life, he read a poem. And another poem.

And that made all the difference. In the end.

Sometimes you have to get old and gray (well, not so old and gray) before you know what is important and what is your destiny in life.

The road not taken

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Wild Child

Jeanne Willis

They caught all the wild children
and put them in zoos,
They made them do sums
and wear sensible shoes.

They put them to bed
at the wrong time of day
and made them sit still
when thay wanted to play.

They scrubbed them with soap
and they made them eat peas,
They made them behave
and say pardon and please.

They took all their wisdom
and wildness away.

That’s why there are none
in the forests today.