Best Places To Live, Enjoy Life, Start a Business, or Retire: A Novel Approach.

Best Places To Live, Enjoy Life, Start a Business, or Retire: A Novel Approach.
James Clayton Napier

“Hence the first principle in changing one’s character is to seek another environment, to let new forces play upon our unused chords, and draw from us a better music.” — Will Durant

I was 17 and growing up in the Midwestern farming community of just under 1,000. My youthful intent, looking out over the cornfields of Ohio, was to find my best place on the planet, move there, and stay the rest of my life.

67 moves later (many of them short-term broadcasting assignments), that best place has been a bit elusive.

Ask me about geography. I’m able to reproduce maps in my mind after hundreds of hours spent looking for THE ONE PLACE that spoke its “Yes” to me.
What did I, back at age 17, expect to do there once I located it?

I would do the best work of my life: writing, painting, taking long walks and receiving a thousand breezy notions to guide my destiny.

Over the years I got out on the open road whenever I could and explored the Oregon coast, Jekyll Island in Georgia, the Apostle Islands off the Northern tip of Wisconsin, Lake Michigan’s shoreline, Sequim and Port Townsend in Washington, all over New Mexico, all over Texas, Florida, Missouri, South Dakota, Colorado.

“Well, what now?” I asked myself. “I’ve traveled nearly everywhere and still no location or city speaks to me in the way I’d love to be spoken to. Surely, there’s an answer waiting for me somewhere. There must be.”

Being impressed with astrology in general, I ordered one of those astro-cartography reports with the planetary lines drawn across the map.
I looked at my “good lines,” such as the Jupiter line (for prosperity), the Venus line (for pleasure), the Mercury line (for communication), the Sun line (for vitality) and surmised, “This line-map is too vague. I’ve been on all those lines and need a lot more guidance than this is giving. I’ve been on that Venus line and felt anything but pleasure while visiting Biloxi!”

The astro-cartography map left me mostly unsupported in my mission of finding my place in the world.

Yes, of course, personal peace and psychological well-being are an inside job. Inside jobs can be done anywhere and shouldn’t depend on being in a certain place. Right?

I also wanted to wake up each morning, however, totally taken by the beauty of nature around me. And my dream has always been to be a philanthropist to others’ dreams. This requires earning more than a barely-squeaking-by broadcasting salary.

While working in Texas I met Cait Benten, an astrologer who also specialized in relocation. After studying at my birth chart and relocating it to other latitudes and longitudes, she said, “Now, look at this, James. Let me explain what happens to your chart in either Bar Harbor, Maine, or Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas?”

She explained the ways in which each place softened some of the most difficult aspects of my chart and gave more potential for financial flow. Each place was different, of course, but both were better in several ways than Cetral Texas.”

So, based on her advice, here I am — writing this article from Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas. The company I work with is located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Perfect? No place is perfect, but I do sense many of the difficult aspects of my birth chart, as pointed out to me, are eased and opportunities are opening.

Relocation astrologers — not the kind who sell the “cheapy” reports — the real ones who work with you personally and care about your life, are on the cutting edge exciting developments in astrology.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow spoke about our human need for money, security, home — a sense of place, community and belongingness — our desire for love and appreciation, for expression of our creativity and our desire for self-actualization (becoming what we may be in this lifetime).

For most of us the prospect of a start in a new location reinvigorates us.

I’d like to share with you my personal favorite definition of security. “Security is not a place of ideological stability but a direction inspired by curiosity.”

The teenage boy living in a rural Ohio community, of course, had no idea his dreams & travels and moves (which were business and family related), would turn out to be invisible threads leading to relocation/locational astrology and a new way to make life choices.

I wish you all the best in your life choices. Consider relocation astrology if you feel stuck where you are currently living.

Joseph Campbell, the great writer and lecturer told his audiences, “Your sacred place is where you find yourself again and again.”

Helping us find our best or sacred place to live, work, retire, and enjoy our lives as we desire to enjoy them is what relocation astrology is about. I suggest you look into it when facing or contemplating a major life change.

“Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, and the world before me. The long brown path before me treading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune, strong and content I travel the open road.” --American poet Walt Whitman, The Open Road

Life, indeed, is quite a journey isn’t it? Robert Lewis Stevenson wrote: “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.”

I’ve done the traveling hopefully part.
There is much to be said, I can tell you, for ARRIVING and getting SETTLED IN!