Is there a there there?

There's a  Civil War joke in this area that goes something like, "Do you know why the Confederates eventually won the Battle of Chickamauga?"  "No, please tell me."  "They won because they hid behind all the monuments."  Ha Ha.

Two or three years ago I could not listen to a news broadcast without somebody saying, "at the end of the day."  I understood it to mean "when all is said and done" or "when the dust settles."  But whatever it meant, a multitude of people on several major networks used that expression quite often. I don't hear that much anymore.  But what I do hear quite a bit is either, "There is no there there" or "Is there a there there?" Before I looked it up I assumed the phrase, since it always was in a political discourse, meant something like "there is no fire associated with this smoke", "there is no there there."  Or the question, "Is there a there there" referring to the same thing.

When I looked it up I learned that the phrase originated with  Gertrude Stein, an American poet and playwright. She returned to Oakland, California, her childhood home, many years later to find that her farm was no longer there. She said of the experience, "There was no there there." So why the news media has picked it up, I have no idea.  Maybe it has been around for years and I just hadn't noticed it before now.  I don't know.

This afternoon on my way to Lafayette, Georgia  from Ringgold, Georgia, I was driving south on Burning Bush Road which becomes Longhollow Road. This is a very pleasant drive through wooded hills and valleys. It's a drive I always enjoy.  This afternoon I started thinking about the Civil War history in  our area that certainly includes the road I was driving on.  Although there are no placards or monuments along this route, certainly with it's proximity to the Chickamauga Battlefield, both Confederate and Union troops walked through the area. I even think there was an officer named Longhollow, but maybe I'm getting him mixed up with Longstreet. But where I'm going with all of this is that I thought, "The Battle of Chickamauga didn't happen on a 'battlefield', it happened in the woods". The Chickamauaga Battlefield is the largest and most visited Civil War battlefield in the United States.  I have been driving in or around this battlefield for thirty eight years.  Because of that, this real estate, for me, is "the battlefield."

But what I realized for the first time is that the Union and Confederate soldiers met up in the woods and started shooting at each other. It was just some woods. A lot of trees.  There was no there there. What they did there made that field a  there. All of these years I have never actually thought that the Civil War soldiers were fighting behind concrete and steel monuments.  But I realized today that I've thought that they were fighting on a "battlefield." I thought there was a there there.  Today, this very day, I realized that they were just fighting in the woods.

I've decided to expand this revelation into other areas of my life.  When something is bothering me I'm going to ask myself "Is there a there there?" The truth is usually that there is a there there,but only because I put it there.  As soon as I stop believing that there is a there there, then the there disappears. I find this thought to be very freeing.

One last thing about "there there".  The expression, probably much older than Gertrude Stein's quote, is used by parents to console their children. So in that context, when I'm concerned about something, even if there actually is a "there there," I can imagine  my mama saying "there there" and feel much better.