I’ve found myself having the same conversation quite a bit lately. “Wow, he moved here from (insert exotic city name) and he promotes Memphis and loves Memphis more than a native!”

“Isn’t it refreshing?”

But really, this is nothing new: People from Memphis tend to be the ones most down on the city. Transplants tend to be the ones most ready to extol its virtues. And I think I finally understand why.

Transplants have chosen to be here. They’ve picked Memphis as their home. They feel ownership over that choice and thus, over the city. Natives, however, were born here. We were raised here. I was raised here, and I wasn’t always wild on the idea of staying in Memphis. In fact the very idea seemed completely out of the question.

It’s a little like assigned reading in high school. It didn’t matter that I loved to read, that I could consume novel after novel at a voracious pace, when it came to the books I was told I had to read I could hardly force myself to turn the first page. It was such a CHORE. I was being forced to do it. Like eating brussel sprouts or reading assigned books or living in the city you were born in, it’s just not as easy to be delighted about something when you feel like it wasn’t your choice.

So when I had the choice, I got up and out. I moved away for school and again further away for yet more school and then to New York City, the land of dreams and all that, to find a job. That had always been my plan: to move to New York and write. And when I did, I realized it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

New York’s a wonderful city and I’ll happily visit again. But around March of last year I started coming to terms with the fact that this dream I’d always envisioned for myself maybe wasn’t just right for me, after all. And after that? I had to really come to terms with the idea that I might just like Memphis. I might actually WANT to live there. It took me months to be comfortable with the phrase because it just didn’t seem plausible. How could someone born and raised in Memphis, so intimately aware of all its ills, actually want to live there?

Perhaps because I’m also intimately aware of all its strengths, its history, the things that make it magical. The things that have always, no matter how far away from home I’ve traveled, made me proud to tell people I was from Memphis. Proud to get into vicious arguments about barbecue and even prouder to school people on the history of blues and soul.

So I moved back in August, became some sort of native-transplant hybrid. I never planned for this. But whereas in New York, a little Charlie Brown rain cloud floated over my head, in Memphis I am followed by a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds and warming my skin at every moment. I hope I never forget how lucky I feel to be in the Bluff City at this very moment, that I carry it with me for the rest of my years as a Memphian and use that energy to make this city a better place. It was a feeling I felt radiating from the rafters at the Memphis Connect one-year anniversary party this week — all these people with the same goal and the same passion for our city in one spot. The energy was palpable.

My challenge to every native Memphian would be to think about the reasons you choose to live here. Because it is, in fact, a choice, even for those of us in the born-and-raised category. So find your reason — or reasons — and when you’ve done that, you’ve found your reason to celebrate Memphis.

barbecue, Memphis, native, Soul music, transplant Memphis Living