Coming home

I took this picture while flying from Mumbai in western India to Coimbatore in southern India.

Dear Reader,

I’m writing this while looking out over a banana field beyond which is a makeshift maidan¹ where some young boys are playing cricket. I’m in southern India for a few weeks. The February sun is warm and picks out the hazy outline of distant blue mountains. Peacocks cry out and long tailed-birds are everywhere. Palm trees sway in the wind while vivid butterflies the size of small birds weave through traffic, and swoop in and out of the neighbor’s small garden. There’s a butterfly whose wings are a lush black with white polka dots and a bright orange one that looks like a flying flame. The jewel-like colors of the butterflies stand out against the dusty afternoon and their lilting, effortless, and confident movement through traffic snarls suggests they possess life’s most profound secrets, and I find myself watching them for clues. It is an idyllic Sunday afternoon, but not just any Sunday. It’s the kind of day you arrive at the end of a long, arduous journey². We all know of days like that. They are longed-for destinations, precious, hard-won, and years in the making, though when we arrive there it doesn’t look or feel exactly the way we thought it would.

“The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, 'Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.' And so it starts.”

―Joseph Campbell

You might’ve read that every journey is a return home to ourselves. Even as I type this a part of me is scoffing at how clichéd that sounds. What does it mean to come home to yourself? I think it’s exactly as the Campbell quote describes, both an expansion and awakening. One way I’ve experienced this combines both actual, physical travel, and a metaphorical journey inside. I’ve always had trouble with traveling because it means leaving home. I scorned and criticized myself for it even as I was resigned to what I thought of as a fixed (read flawed) personality trait. I had a routine to combat the rush of anxiety that accompanied every departure: I left early, and I kept myself busy and distracted. It wasn’t until this one time when I was stuck in an airport transit hotel, with no place to go and no available distractions, that I met the fears that accompanied me every time I traveled. I hadn’t known I was so afraid. It was as though they had been trying to get my attention and finally, finally, I couldn’t run away. Seeing my fears, hearing their stories, and even worse, feeling them, was terrible. I was filled with grief when I realized that every time I left, I despaired of ever returning home. That evening, I felt wrung out and emptied. And the next day, I felt a little lighter. It didn’t mean I was never afraid again, or that I became an expert traveler, but something was changed. When I traveled again, I met my fears again, but I knew their story. I knew to expect them and to make room for them, and to be kind. That’s one way I think of coming home to myself, a kind of making space for more of me. Or, if I were my own home, it’s an unlocking of a room that’s been sealed shut for years.

The only journey is the one within.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

Reader, I’d love to know what coming (or returning) home means to you.

Best,

Priya

1. A maidan is an open ground.

2. I was reminded of the C.P. Cavafy poem Ithaka.