Home Is Where I Am
It is difficult to adjust to being outside of the comforts of the places where we reside. I often struggle with homesickness and the feeling of emptiness when I am far away from the place I consider to be home. When I found myself dealing with this issue in the Dominican Republic and South Africa I decided that in to grow as a traveler and as a person I must challenge how I conceptualize “home”.
Each time I embark on a new journey abroad, I immediately begin to search for new sights and new people to potentially fill the void of familiarity. I searched, in vein, with the hope that these things would take the place of the people and things I left behind. I have since learned that you may not find what you are searching for, and that is okay. It is these occasions that force you to discover who you are without the comforts that have sustained who you’ve been. When you don’t find what you are looking for, you have the opportunity to create what it is that you need to thrive in that foreign space.
Though I write this from my residence San Bernardino, California I no longer consider this house my home. This is where I have received love, but that love does not stay there. The beautiful thing about the energy of love is that it is not limited to one place or thing or person; you can bring it with you, you can give it back and you can pay it forward. In retrospect, I realize that my feelings of homesickness came from the familial energy that I was missing, not necessarily the physical space of home. I now know that peace, love and joy exist within me, and I can bring these energies into to the spaces that I enter. Home is where my body is. I take home with me everywhere that I go.
It is human to miss those who we leave behind as we travel the globe. Rather than dwell on what’s missing, this is the time to honor your opportunity by fostering your own home in the place that you are in. The experience of transcending boundaries is the very thing that pushes you to look within yourself to discover something new.