Matthew McConaughey moved from California to Texas before it was cool.
Everybody and their mother has been fleeing California for places like Florida and Texas, but Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, and his wife Camila, made the move 10 years ago, well before pandemic times sent people (well, mostly wealthy people) heading for greener pastures, quite literally. In cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles… people are still leaving for places like Tennessee, North Carolina, and of course Florida and Texas.
But for McConaughey, returning to the state he where was born and raised was easy. It was an opportunity for Matthew to slow down and reconnect to his roots. But his wife Camila, who didn’t know anybody in Texas, it was a different story. She was born in Brazil and had only lived in New York and LA since she moved to the United States. Texas was going to be quite the change of pace. She was very comfortable in Malibu (not hard to be I suppose), but she found that Texas is actually much more like her home in Brazil, particularly in the the hospitality.
She tells in Southern Living in a frontpage cover story:
“It’s hard to describe with a short answer, but I can tell you that Texas is home. We can go all over the world but the moment I land in Texas, the gravity just comes down, my shoulders relax, I go ‘I’m home.’ The people of Texas, I’ve experienced as loyal and trustworthy, people who give a lot of value to values and structure and respect, and in a way, that’s how I grew up in Brazil.
We grew up saying ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, sir’ or—as I should say—‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘Yes, sir.’ It takes me right back to how I was raised. In Texas, we were going to the church that we like to attend every Sunday. Sports became a stronger tradition for the kids.”
Matthew adds:
“Ritual! Ritual came back, whether that was Sunday church, sports, dinner together as a family every night, or staying up after that telling stories in the kitchen, sitting at the island pouring drinks and nibbling while retelling them all in different ways than we told them before.
Time slowed down. The clock was right, the body clock. And part of that is ritual; part of that is just the distance between places and the way people move. But it’s also the hospitality, the courtesy, the common sense, the lack of drama.”
Hard to argue with that… especially if you have kids. I myself spent the last 16 years in Chicago, and last year I moved to a small lake town in Wisconsin. And all I can say about that is… I wish I had done it sooner. If you know, you know… raise a glass of Pantalones tequila to that.
Check out the full conversation:
