“Home- the need for solid ground – is vital as it ever was, but now more and more of us are obliged to find it on the move. For millions of us, the journey becomes the destination. And a part of us –at sea, in the air, in passage or in passageway- wishes that there were a simpler way home.” Pico Ayer, The Journey Home
We pine for things that we have lost, for details we let go, of spaces and places that were once important and in the rush of things, or in the necessity of life, we let escape, like home. Home for many of us is that primeval, mystical place we came from – a womb that has protected us and nourished us, a place where we were made whole, where we were complete. A place we call our own, a place where we belong.
And yet, here we are now – fragmented, separate, desperate, embarking on journeys that will hopefully lead us back home. Each moment is an attempt to capture just one more fragment of where we were, and what we were once. Each step is taken with a desire to somehow find the missing tracks, the trail that can lead us to where we have been. And yet, home no longer exists for many of us – but that which continues to haunt us.
Even in strange places, we long to trace the familiar – the look of a street, a certain angle of light, the texture of fabric, the fleeting aroma of that which escapes us, the oddly reminiscent chatter of a strange language – all these evoke in us a strong, wild longing to go back to this ephemeral home we have lost, to a place where all things seem to fit, where the territories speak to you, and resonate with familiarity.
And so we must learn to find home wherever we are. For even when in some sort of enchantment we are lead back home, we find we are changed. We are not the same, and we find ourselves as outsiders, exiles to what was once familiar, to what was once belonged to us with integrity. We must learn then that the only homes that shall not be lost, free from the encroachment of time, of change, of distance, is the home that is within all of us. This is the home now where we must build our future on, a home until we reach that final place where we shall be welcomed like long-lost loved ones, and where the strains of music and laughter from the grand banquet makes us quicken our pace, and makes this pilgrimage more bearable.
We pine for things that we have lost, for details we let go, of spaces and places that were once important and in the rush of things, or in the necessity of life, we let escape, like home. Home for many of us is that primeval, mystical place we came from – a womb that has protected us and nourished us, a place where we were made whole, where we were complete. A place we call our own, a place where we belong.
And yet, here we are now – fragmented, separate, desperate, embarking on journeys that will hopefully lead us back home. Each moment is an attempt to capture just one more fragment of where we were, and what we were once. Each step is taken with a desire to somehow find the missing tracks, the trail that can lead us to where we have been. And yet, home no longer exists for many of us – but that which continues to haunt us.
Even in strange places, we long to trace the familiar – the look of a street, a certain angle of light, the texture of fabric, the fleeting aroma of that which escapes us, the oddly reminiscent chatter of a strange language – all these evoke in us a strong, wild longing to go back to this ephemeral home we have lost, to a place where all things seem to fit, where the territories speak to you, and resonate with familiarity.
And so we must learn to find home wherever we are. For even when in some sort of enchantment we are lead back home, we find we are changed. We are not the same, and we find ourselves as outsiders, exiles to what was once familiar, to what was once belonged to us with integrity. We must learn then that the only homes that shall not be lost, free from the encroachment of time, of change, of distance, is the home that is within all of us. This is the home now where we must build our future on, a home until we reach that final place where we shall be welcomed like long-lost loved ones, and where the strains of music and laughter from the grand banquet makes us quicken our pace, and makes this pilgrimage more bearable.
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