At Home in a Memory
There is this experience I have when I think back to parts of my childhood — summers spent at my grandma’s, watching I Love Lucy, eating sourdough toast with mayo and thinly sliced roast beef, going about the day with no particular agenda or schedule other than to spend time in the pool, playing with my hot wheels and splashing water over the edges where it would run into cracks in the ground and all the ants would come rushing out.
It is a warm experience,
A feeling of being home in a memory.
Home.
Home in this subtle, but very real dimension which transcends time and space, whose front door is opened with nothing more and nothing less than exactly one momentary thought.
It’s a funny thing, for home has long been a feeling I’ve searched far and wide for, to know where it is, to be there as long as I can, to feel at peace in a place.
Perhaps the funnier thing yet,
Is that the more it is searched for,
the more it seems to elude me.
The more I look with my mind,
The more it seems to drift away.
If I stop to feel into it, to really see what is happening here, it seems to be this—
That home is not under the authority of the mind; rather, it is the dominion of the heart.
The heart, which allows us a window into our feeling past — a moment of teleportation into a familiar reality that once was.
The heart, which allows us to open & connect with other souls — a moment of feeling at home, when we are with the right ones.
The heart, which allows us direct access to the seat of our soul, our very purest essence, which when we are in tune with that — well, the feeling of being at home becomes accessible no matter where we may find ourselves.
One simple choice to see it, whatever “it” is, through the lens of your heart will bring you home, because it is only your heart which can see the Truth, the way it really is.
You will know you are with your heart when being right no longer takes precedence over connecting with another human, or when curiosity and seeking to understand become more important than being understood yourself, or when speaking with compassion — first and fore mostly to yourself, and then, to others — takes the driver’s seat in moments of trial and turbulence.
The greatest masters of humanity — Jesus, Ghandi, Buddha — before they were who they became, they were all just humans like you and I, but they became who we know them as today because they learned the power of the heart.
It is not an easy path, the way of the heart — as you look around the room, you will often see that people who live like this are ridiculed, deemed crazy, or (my personal favorite) not “logical” — and it is true. It is not logical. It is a little “crazy” when you consider that the vast majority of humans believe that the mind is the end-all-be-all way to live. It is a little ridiculous to decide that softness is the way when fear, hustle, and pure force have long been the paths which created the world we live in today.
And yet, it may be all those things, but it is this too: a path to feeling at home. A path to bridging the differences which separate us. A path to creating a world which acknowledges fear but chooses love. A path to create the change so many of us want to see, which we must first create within ourselves.
No one can do this for you;
Even if 99% of the world began to live this way, you must still learn to do it yourself.
You know it is possible;
You know it is the way.
“Home is where the heart is” no longer remains just a simple plaque you can pick up from Home Goods, but a very real, tangible truth with which you can change first, you, and then — the world.
(Imagine, all that from tuning into an episode of I Love Lucy. How magical and spontaneous this world really is).
AUTHOR’S NOTE#100daysofwriting | This essay is the second in a series of 100 I am challenging myself to write before the end of the year 2022. As of today, 110 days remain. Will the essays be perfect? No. Will they be done? Yes. As a life-long recovering perfectionist who loves to write but fears subpar work, to write with such frequency and disregard for most standards except the one that asks, is it published? will be an adventure, to say the least.
Topics, I’m sure, will span the breadth of seriousness to silliness, will cover the grounds of spirituality to observations I may make in a nail salon, but truthfully, there are no promises in such a challenge, except to say that yes — they will be done.
You can keep up with my writing challenge by following me on Medium, or subscribing to my email list.