This is the eighth year since I left my hometown and moved to this country. In eight years, I’ve set my foot in three states and six cities, renting apartments with mice running around and owning a house that cost way more than I could afford. I’ve lived with someone, committed to a person, moved out, returned, then moved out again, until I finally found myself in this lovely city of the middle west all by myself. Oddly enough, this is the first time I’ve ever felt at home over the past eight years, without a partner or a family member. I came to realize that home is not a simple combination of shelter and love. It is the nest where our heart belongs and starts to discover the true self.
When I was young, I’ve always pictured the “perfect home” where a couple lived happily together with a few children in a beautiful house. Part of that fantasy was built on the fact that I had no siblings and sometimes felt lonely growing up as the only child. The tiny apartment I grew up in had no space for one extra life that I could befriend with, not even a pet or a visiting playmate. In corollary, my longing for a perfect big home with people I love was seeded early on and began to gnaw as I moved into adulthood. I worked hard for that dream and learned skills to be a good hostess of this fantasized property. However, when a home was finally in place physically together with a partner to share it with, I sadly found myself more lonely and isolated than before. Bills, mortgage, house chores, and daily routines created a whopping hole of emptiness in my heart where I completely lost directions of my life. My soul was wailing for freedom as I rushed my life robotically in the “perfect home” that I dreamed for with reality pressurized heavily on my shoulders. That was the moment when I recognized that home was more than a physical infrastructure with two people dwelling under the same roof and splitting financial responsibilities. It should be a place that fosters identity and individuality where the mind, heart and spirit are housed with the sense of belonging. It is the nest that shapes my unique soul where individuality and difference are respected.
To feel at home, a person has to look inside to the heart and make efforts to access and nurture the numinous sanctum of belonging. That is the power house to the sense of homecoming. After moving to Columbus, I came to realize that it is surprisingly easy to develop the sense of home simply by doing things we enjoy. Every time I get myself seated in my little workstation by the window to meet a blank page of my sketchbook, I’ve prepared myself for visitation and voyage of an exciting adventure where I have no idea what will come. Yet a strong sense of homecoming suffused my heart, as the song tells:
I’m coming home,
I’m coming home,
Tell the world I’m coming home,
Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday,
I know my kingdom awaits and they’ve forgiven my mistakes,
I’m coming home, I’m coming home,
Tell the world that I’m coming home…
That tiny workstation in my little apartment coalesced into the transience of time where I was gladly immersed in creation and completely oblivious of the mundane world. Though working late at night in solitude, my creativity and imagination perforate the mantle of darkness and infiltrate vigor into my soul. I was able to build a space where my individual life is shaped with balance and poise, and my wearied body gets refreshment and renewal to carry my earthly life forward. Without anyone sharing the space I live in, my body and spirit surprisingly arrive home and join each other in peace.
When we left our childhood home and started to build our own individual nests, we are continuously in search of the next home that gives us the sense of belonging and security. We forage for a shelter where our heart can rest and rejuvenate, under a roof from the rain, by the hearth on a cold winter night, or with a person to love and share each other’s world with. The yearning of homecoming took us to different places with different people, who showed us fierce love, harsh nonchalance, or deep wounds, as we entered and departed from the place in share. No matter who to share your home with or where your home is, we know deep down that it is always the destination that we are seeking throughout our lives. Any voyages we take lead us to the ultimate harbor of home where the heart resides and free from ballast.
After changing home almost every year in the past eight years, I’ve learned that mobility is also a form of home as long as I’m actively engaging and accepting it. I can take refuge anywhere at any time to rest my senses by opening them up to enjoy the small miracles that have been rushed through: gazing at the rain rearranging the air; watching lavender sky embracing the dusk; hearing birds chirping the hassle of a day. From the enjoyment of small beautiful things, I dwelled my spirit against the vagaries of the outside world, created a home-like cradle that absolves fear and insecurity, and allowed myself to hear the truth that my rushed life fears.
Geographical fixation can never generate or frame your sense of homecoming, nor does anyone else you live with. The feeling has to come from you, when you embrace the fact that you are always changing and journeying from one threshold to another, and that nothing is eternal except your soul. The physical home is merely a container where the energy of life arises and relents, welcoming the birth of life and bidding adieu when it ends. When demise comes, the body is interred in the loam of the land, like a cesarean section in reverse where a baby returns to a mother’s womb. No matter where we are in the journey of life, we are always home to ourselves, physically or spiritually, because our body is an integral part of the eternal soul.
Born as a human being, we are unfortunately separated after birth. We constantly feel a sense of loss and detachment as we enter into a new phase of life in an unfamiliar environment. One thing I’ve learned over the past eight years of moving is that you can always find home in yourself regardless of your location or your travel companion.
I have no idea where my next home will be and more likely I will move again because my heart is urging me to seek and explore more into the world. One thing I know for certain is that I can always hold hope, sending homecoming litanies to myself and to all lost souls, and muster them into the galaxy of love and belonging:
May the home you nested bring you back to sound sleep every night. May you rest in a luminous dream that repairs the wear of your day and restores the youth of your heart. May you wake up in the symphonies of birdsong that invites you to a new day of beginning where you see the world breaking at the onset of hope, possibilities, and dreams.
May your home accrue fecundity, passion, and gaiety that add momentum and courage to your journey. May your home bring you and your beloved together, filling each other’s chalice with love and celebrating the birth of reunion. May your home gestate the emerging spirit of your child that imbibes encouragement and joy. May your home house your spirits beyond any physical limitation and help spread love in eternity.