“Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.” Naguib Mahfouz
When I set out on my journey as an explorer I was only 17. Truthfully, I had already attempted my first escape into the greater world a couple of years earlier when I was 15 and I ran off to Hollywood thinking I would be discovered as a television soap opera actor.
My early adventures into the greater world were transformative in the richest of ways. They gave me a wider perspective from which to see people and places and a sense of clarity that from then on that I did not want my view of the world to be limited by staying in one place my entire life. And so I have now traveled to or lived in 14 different countries and had many great adventures exploring places many will never get to see.
This is what inspires me to write and share my stories, to give others a view they may never otherwise see.
Recently, I have been reflecting more deeply over my arduous journeys and what I have become aware of is that over all these adventures in other places I was not so much attempting to explore but to escape.
In my formative years, wherever “home” was, it was not to be found where I was. And so when I was 17, I was ready to go find it “out there” somewhere. Not so different from my life today, when I was 18, I was roaming about with only one bag. I guess I am not making much progress by the world’s definition.
I have now experienced many beautiful places worthy of calling home. There was Hawaii with its perfect tropical beauty, Scandinavia with its happiest countries in the world (and nude beaches I might add), Europe, Asia, Kyoto, Japan (where part of me always remains), S.Korea, Panama and now Costa Rica. Over these many years, I was able to hand pick elements and cultural ways from each of these places and craft my own tapestry of what my ideal home might look like. And yet I always remained on the move, perhaps returning to the familiarity and disconnectedness of never landing in one place for too long.
It is quite something to wake up one day in a foreign place and realize that all of the elements you were always looking for and seeking in your ideal home environment are now right in front of you. It can be quite sobering to realize all that you are in a place and way of life that you for many years only envisioned.
And yet it is in that wonderful moment that you also realize that the “home” you were traveling the world and seeking “out there” was within you all along. Your arduous journey to find and create the perfect external home were simply a metaphor for what you were endlessly seeking within you, that sense of being at home within yourself.
Carl Jung said “we project what is within in us onto our outer world and somehow call it fate. “
And so the true pot of gold at the end of all the journeys is not in finding the ideal surroundings to create your perfect home. Hawaii, Kyoto, Norway, Costa Rica and many other places have much to offer, but each comes along with just as many challenges that are uniquely their own.
The true pot of gold at the end of all journeys is in finally arriving, perhaps for the first time, at the home that was within you all along and choosing to rest there for awhile, to be happy and content with nowhere else to be and nowhere on the horizon ahead.
As Rabindranath Tagore once wisely wrote….
“The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”
I am grateful to suddenly find myself in a season of home, both within my internal and external environment. Although one never knows in this chaotic and uncertain world how long that will last, I am learning to grow comfortable with the sense of familiarity of being in one place and greeting myself at my own front door.
View from the Road
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica at Sunset
Old wooden fishing boats in bright colors of blue, green and yellow danced along the shore while children swam and laughed to the Calypso rhythms coming from the nearby restaurant and bar overlooking the cove. Locals riding by barefoot on bikes and hammocks swaying in the breeze, it was hard to imagine anyone in Puerto Viejo ever being stressed about anything. As sunset began to descend on Playa Negra we found our special spot to sit as many of the locals gathered for the epic display of the day. Never had there been a more perfect moment in time.
Field Notes
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
From the Archives
Please enjoy Seeking Home from the archives.
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Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountain in Boquete, Panama.
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