Refugees

What does it take to motivate someone to pack up and leave their home, their culture, their food, religion, community, family, and language? People do it all over the world looking to escape the intolerable or find hope when it is lost. My Grandfather came to this country at 16 with an address in his shoe on the promise of a fresh start and a job. The world was not kinder then, and it is not kinder now to those who pack up and leave.

Human horrors know few boundaries, so you can imagine what motivated my ancestors as well as what motivates people now to trudge hundreds and even thousands of miles to escape.

What would it take to motivate someone to leave the planet, to seek out a new start on a new world, face the unknown, and pit their wits and talent against the frailties of the human condition. What they put behind them must have been bad, really bad. Those first settlers on NewEarth were conservationists from all over Earth. They were dreaming of free clean water and air, food that wouldn’t make them sick, and a chance to build a life outside of poverty. By the time they discovered that the planet had power, they had already settled. I wonder what they thought as those first connections were made.