Heroes Not Zombies

Think of the places on this Earth which mean the most to you….the places where you feel at home, the places which feel as if they are your origin places, where your roots lie, the places which feel special because what happened there was so important to you, or had such an impact, the places where you feel in awe of the beauty there, the places you love, and those which your loved ones love.

Stirling, in central Scotland, was where I was born, where I grew up, and where I learned, post university, to become a doctor. It’s a city steeped in history with the castle and the monument, two of its most prominent features on its skyline. But it’s also a city with a great river snaking through it. The River Forth winds and bends and loops its way through Stirling, heading towards Edinburgh and the North Sea. The Old Stirling Bridge was the only crossing point linking the Scottish Highlands to the Lowlands.

Stirling has been a meeting place, a market town, a Royal town, a town where people met from East and West, and from North and South.

My gran told me that boys born in Stirling were known as “sons of the Rock”, after the ancient rock on which the castle was built. I think that was a pretty powerful message to give to a child, conveying a deep sense of roots, of stability and consistency in the face of flow and change, a kind of constancy.

Those are qualities I own, and which others have remarked upon.

I wonder how much my environments shaped me, and how much I continue to contribute and influence in turn as we shape our world together.