HOME

Every now and then I have people ask me if I am ever going back 'home'. I find the word 'home' a contemplative word. Once you leave home it is no longer 'home'. It's a place you used to live. I consider the place you are living at the moment as home.

I always answer the question with true conviction and a clear and simple NO, I most likely will never be going home.

For this moment of now I am home. Only very extreme circumstances could ever force me to go backwards.

Besides, I just don't do that. Once I leave a place, person, or thing it's GAME OVER for me. I don't leave things, people or situations until I am 100 percent certain that I have no intention of going back. I believe in burning bridges. It ensures I will never go back to to something I felt the internal calling to leave in the first place.

Besides, you can't recreate the environment you left. I saw that my first trip back to Mobile after I had been living in Austin a year. Everything and everybody I had left was different...my family and friends, the city, the people, the roads, old neighbors had moved away.....yet, I felt that everyone could only remember and see me as the person who I was before I left.

Possibly because their surroundings didn't change. I was the one that left. I was the one that experienced change...different cultures and perspectives, made new friends, lived in a place where there were no preconceived notions about who I was or what was expected of me, learned what was truly important in my life by stepping out into the unknown, figured out who really loves me enough to keep in touch, and who I really love enough to keep in touch with...

All the memories I ever had of home were just that - memories. Not home.

You can't recreate the environment, because it's completely different. You can never go home again.

So, all the memories you have - of going to school, hanging out with friends, living with your family - are just memories. You can never re-live those times again in the same way you remember them to be.

You can't go home again because it's not there. Home is where you grew up, the people and places and events of your days there have changed just as you have.

'The stranger who comes home does not make himself at home but makes home itself a stranger.'