Coming Home

Years ago, I listened to a seventh grade teacher argue that all things change, that nothing is ever the same, even day to day.

I argued back.

“What about this chair,” I asked? “It is the exact same chair I sat in a moment ago that I sit in now.”

“No, it’s not,” he argued, “it’s different.”

“How,” I pressed.

“There is dust on it that was not there before,” he affirmed.

“But it’s still the same chair,” I continued.

He smiled.

20-odd years later, I see his point. 

Coming home from a long stay away is always a bit of an unknown. No matter how much you’ve looked forward to a return – and believe me, I have – nothing is ever exactly the way you left it, and never will be again.

For weeks, I’ve been waiting for my moment to go home, missing family and friends, and definitely my home. (Clean shower, anyone?) 

But already from the plane, I feel the wind’s subtle change.

The past nine weeks have given me an unprecedented opportunity to look at my life from a new perspective, one I’ve relished, and I come home with quite a lot of plans for what to do next.

Still, I feel the subtle pressures changing.

An announcement from a former co-worker about a new job; a walk past a bookstore brimming with stories surely similar to mine; news from long lost family coming to light; the endless line of cellphones streaming through the airport.

The message is clear: real life is here. 

And it brings a pull of its own that I have been blissfully away from for a time. Get on with your life, it says. Enough of this messing around. Find a job already.

But it isn’t what I have planned.

It’s a real problem for those who dare to dream, to do something so different from what was done before, what has become expected. And it’s not just the lucky ones like me who’ve had interruptions in life that give us an almost unspoken pass to try anew. No, it’s a challenge for all as these messages come in everything we see and do. Its insidious nature gives it a power and potency few wish to admit.

We want our children to succeed so we tell them how to get ahead and encourage them any way we can.

But the knowledge we share is inevitably limited by the amount of experience and imagination we possess. So we fill in the gaps with what we see around us, – and friends – the messages we see here so often are sadly not the ideals I choose to live by. A successful life, yes, but at the expense of all else? Not anymore.

There’s more out there in this world and I have had the privilege of experiencing just the tiniest pieces of what “more” means to me in my life.

The question is, how do I keep that new spirit alive in an environment that’s old? 

We all fall prey to it, the draw of the familiar. And the familiar can be wonderful, it’s all the things I’ve craved during this time away.

But there’s something hard-fought that I must protect, and it will take determination to resist the pull of the expected.

It’s the greatest challenge I bring back with me this morning to LA.

Tonight, I start another new chapter in my life, one where it’s important to me to combine the learnings of this time with the comforts of a good home, of the good intentions that surround me.

It isn’t going to be easy. But it is going to be worth it. And therein lies the ever-present change that poor tortured teacher tried so hard to explain. Nothing is ever the same again. For I have been changed.