Resonation

I have an idea that some men are born out of their 

due place. accident has cast them amid strangers in 

their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known 

from childhood or the populous streets in which they 

have played, remain but a place of passage. They may 

spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred 

and remain aloof among the only scenes they have 

ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that 

sends men far and wide in the search for something 

permanent, to which they may attach themselves. 

Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the 

wanderer back to lands which his ancestors 

left in the dim beginnings of history. 

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which 

he mysteriously feels that he belongs. here 

is the home he sought, and he will settle 

amid scenes that he has never seen before, 

among men he has never known, as though 

they were familiar to him from his birth. 

here at last he finds rest.

—from The Moon and Sixpence

by W. Somerset Maugham, 1919