Coming Home

I love Tom Hanks. In fact he is my celebrity crush. I think he is funny, brilliant and tender. Next to my husband I consider him the ideal man. One of my favorite Tom Hank's movies is Sleepless in Seattle. I love a good Rom-Com and Tom is the prefect leading man. I have seen this movie more times then I care to admit and yet there is a line in the movie that always makes me cry.

I'll set the scene: Tom's wife has past away and he gets duped by his eight year old son into talking with a radio "love-line" host about his loss. The doctor asks, "What was so special about your wife?" To which Tom replies, "How long is your program? Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together... and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home... only to no home I'd ever known... I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like... magic."

When I think about Tom saying this it brings tears to my eyes. I find the thought so endearing. This character's experience of being with his wife was like coming home. There is nothing better than the feeling of coming home. To me that means being safe, warm, welcomed as you are for who you are. It is being in a place that is so familiar one recognizes it as a part of one's own self. Coming home for me is to be at total peace with where you are.

I can't imagine a lovelier thing to say about the experience of being with another person. I am currently having that feeling about coming home from India.

As to be expected, everyone has been asking about our experience on the trip. They all ask, "How was it?' and I struggle to answer.  I have never been to a place more unfamiliar. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, everything was alien to my senses. At first the experience was exciting and thrilling. All the unknowns kept me on my toes and made me feel alive. It was a rush. Then it became scary. I felt a real sense of danger when we were sick or lost. The anxiety I would normally feel in those situations was amplified by the threat of being in a strange territory. That heightened tension led to exhaustion and then ultimately desperate longing and an overwhelming feeling of being homesick. 

And with all that going on Lindon and I connected and worked together in a way we never had before. The love we feel for each other evolved and flourished. We saw amazing sights that took our breath away like the Taj Mahal, prayers on the Ganges and the birthplace of the four noble truths in Sarnath. We ate amazing food that delighted and terrified us and met the most amazing people with the most diverse back grounds.

Travel, of any kind, is an opportunity to embrace what is unknown. It is an invitation to the senses to see what else is out there and what possibilities exist outside of our normal routine. In my mind traveling is the freedom to challenge what I believe is true.

For example, as I shared last week, I thought that in order to honor someone else's beliefs I had to put my own aside. That someone not believing what I believe somehow made one of us wrong.  Not true. In fact I can appreciate my own beliefs more while I am curious and interested in someone's viewpoint. Up until last week I thought that "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." This was so clearly untrue as I saw people praying and absolving themselves in the same place they threw their trash. Up until last week I thought that going to the bathroom was a private activity. I now understand clearly that was my own judgment as people all over India and Nepal used the side of the road, in front of God and everybody, as their personal toilet.  

I am writing this without judgement. In fact I write this with a sense of awe and reverence. There are people all over the world living life in a very different fashion then I would and I realized my objections to other ways of life are all self created. My objection is part of an illusion I must have created to make me feel safe or justified. So who would I be if I gave up my righteousness regarding what I think is best or true, and then ultimately knew that I was safe no matter what?

Traveling to India and Nepal gave me an undeniable experience that I make up stories of how to live my life and that what I think is right and true about people or what "should" be, isn't. Simply put; I am making everything up. If I like what I have made up I have the choice to keep it and if I don't I have the choice to change it. 

That feels like ultimate freedom to me. Undeniable power to create the experience I want when I'm in the unknown. This creative, free person is who I am without living in that bogus illusion. I feel more safe than I ever have because (and I only realize this now looking back on how I lived before) part of me always knew it was an illusion but there was a fear of what would happen if the illusion fell apart. 

These realizations have changed my life at such a fundamental level. I have come home, only its no home I have ever known. The surroundings are familiar but the experience is very different. In this home I have the freedom to be and choose what I like and don't like AND be with others who completely disagree and honor their opinions and I love that about me. 

I'm not coming home to California or America (although I deeply appreciate these places in a way I hadn't before) I am coming home to myself. To a place inside of me I never knew existed and always longed to be connected to.  The joy of coming home to this place in me is real, familiar and magic.