Homeward Bound

I always felt I was in the wrong place. And this feeling grew within me from childhood to fatherhood.

Despite a loving family and close friends, as a child I couldn’t wait to leave home, and did so at the earliest opportunity. After that I never had the same partner, lived in the same house, or worked for the same company, for any length of time. This has been a repeating pattern throughout my life. I have a constant yearning to move on to pastures new.

I did try to settle down and find a more permanent home. I lived close to family and friends and far away from them. I lived with large groups of people and on my own. I lived in five countries on four different continents in less than a decade. I have been married and divorced on more than one occasion. I worked in blue- and white-collar roles, from grimy factory floors to plush new offices, from labourer to senior manager. I have been poor and I have been wealthy.

Still, I was not where I wanted to be. But worse than that, I had no idea where or who I wanted to be. I just knew that I wanted to be somewhere else, not here. I was emotionally and spiritually lost, and desperately unhappy and frustrated.

Then I met someone who challenged my perspective. ‘Life is not somewhere else. It’s not something else with somebody else. It’s right here,’ she said, pointing to her head and her heart. ‘Life is here and now. We make the most of the cards we’re dealt. We change something we don’t like, and we move on. We try new things. We fail and we succeed. Life is for living, not for regretting and not for wishing away.’

Now I’m homeward bound, because I realise that home is not physical. It’s not the location, or place of work or study, nor the people around me. Home is within my soul.