The concept of "home" is something that has tormented me in recent years.
It is a concept that is often associated with familiarity, sameness, a reconnection to your past. You are supposed to feel grounded, understood, and known in a deeper way when you're in this place. It is supposed to remind you who you are, and give you a chance to breathe in a world of perpetual change.
Some people never leave their hometowns. Their best friend is the same one they had when they were 4 years old. They frequent the same restaurants, order the same food, go to the same parks, ride the same bus to work at the same time every morning.
That may work for awhile, but then something happens. Their best friend gets married and moves a few states away. Their elementary school closes and turns into office buildings. Their favorite restaurant closes and a new one takes its place that doesn't serve that amazing plate of spaghetti and meatballs with the sauce that tastes just right. The town starts to look a little different. Still, they hold tight to the things that are familiar and they mostly feel connected to the things around them, using their families as the constant in the equation and their support when change becomes too overwhelming.
If you have chosen to live this way, no judgement. It's one way of moving through life and it also happens to be the way billions of people live, whether by choice or necessity.
But it is not the path I've chosen. I have taken on every opportunity to broaden my horizons, expand my circle of friends, shake up my equilibriums and expose myself to everything new under the Sun. New Meetup group? I'm in. New language? I'm willing to learn. Move across the country? Let's go!
There is a certain mindset that you have to embrace in order to live life this way. Carol Dweck talks about this in her excellent book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Basically, you either believe that you can expand beyond the familiar and easy and actually succeed at this-- the "growth mindset"-- or you can believe that you were born with a fixed set of talents and no other possibilities exist for you-- the "fixed mindset." The one you have chosen for yourself (and yes, it is a choice) has massive implications for your experience of life.
I was born in a city where the "fixed mindset" is endemic. I don't remember when I decided it, but as far back as I can remember I knew that I was destined for a better life. Not just capable of it, but hungry for it. This partly stemmed from the desire to escape devastating psychological abuse at home, and partly from an early love of the natural world that created a kind of awe best described by William Blake's opening words to Auguries of Innocence:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
Since those early yearning days, I have soaked up every bit of the nectar of life I possibly could. I have made friends all over the world, tried my hand at learning very difficult things, and exposed myself to new cultures, ideas, and places at breakneck speeds. I have wandered very, very far from "home."
As a consequence, I have often felt isolated, drifting, unknown, misunderstood, and overwhelmed by change.
When I chose to move away from home, there was a consequence: most of my friends and family now lived in other cities. Today, as I write this, nobody within a 3000 mile radius knows what I was like as a kid, or teen, or even young adult, meaning that I can't easily inject those parts of myself into conversation. This oftentimes makes it easy to forget that people love me. Nobody gets my jokes or references to the past. My familiar guideposts and ways of relating to others are all gone.
As you can imagine, all of this can create a massive ache for a place to call "home."
Except, this place is a myth. If you take on a growth mindset, you can never go home.
Feeling "at home" presupposes both that you and the things you once knew are the same as they used to be. Even if everything about your home has remained the same, you have changed. And with your new vision of the world, your home will never feel the same. You will see its places and people with new eyes, and that grounded feeling you hoped for will never fully come.
This is the pain associated with living a growth mindset. It is what we exchange for the benefit of a free, fulfilled, and enriched life. For me, it is a worthwhile trade.... most of the time. But I have my days.
If this sounds familiar, there are three things you can do to remedy the feeling:
1) Remember that it is you who chose this life, freely and willingly. You can make a different choice anytime if it gets to be too much for you, and there's no shame in that.
2) List all the things that have come into your life-- all the new, fun, and interesting people, places, and experiences-- that you never would have had if you didn't make that choice. Spend some time in a state of gratitude for these things.
3) Finally, replace the word "home" with the word "present." If you're fully committed to a life of growth, the thing you really want is present awareness, no matter where you are or who you're with. You don't actually want what you had before. You gave that up for the benefit of something new and exciting, remember?
Something that always helps me when I'm feeling astray and needing presence is to play a game called "Just The Facts, Ma'am." In this game, I start listing out everything that I can see, hear, or feel at the moment. Like this:
"Right now, I'm driving and listening to acoustic guitar music. I like the way it sounds. There are tall buildings to my right, and trees to my left. My neck is a little stiff, and I'm feeling slightly hungry. I miss my cat, Penny. It is 5:42 pm on April 24th. I have lived in California for 1 year and 8 months. I am about to go home and change my clothes before I go out dancing. Right now, I'm worried about my meeting tomorrow at 10:00 am. I should make a note to revisit slides 3-7 in my deck before then. It's slightly chilly out now. I need to buy toothpaste."
Etcetera. This has curbed more than a few hunger pangs for this mythical place called "home," and it might work for you, too. You don't need any special tools, or an app, or to be in any particular place or doing any particular thing to get this "right." Just do it and see how it makes you feel.
It's amazing how much simple present awareness in your current environment can calm you down, make you feel more in control, make you feel... home.
