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“The world’s thy ship and not thy home.”
Thérèse de Lisieux
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“All of life is a coming home.
Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home.”
Patch Adams
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Well. I had all these quotes and I didn’t know what to do with them until I saw the image at the opening of this post: “They say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving maybe I’m going home.”
I have often wondered why many of us are so restless. We seek things, and travel places looking for ‘something’ and dream dreams. This doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy what we have nor does it mean we don’t accept reality. It just means that there is always an undercurrent of change or “what ifs” or “what could be’s” underneath the surface of our Life. At the same time we are sailing through Life seeking some place we can land which we can not only call home, but actually feels like home.
And maybe that is where the line “home is where you hang your hat’ comes into play. In its simplicity it is actually suggesting that it really isn’t your hat that matters it is when you accept that you can be who you are and that ‘who’ is all you can be that you have found home. And while Thérèse was really suggesting that the material world was simply your journey and heaven, or God, is your destination, the overall thought is truer than true.
Whether you believe in something bigger than you or simply believe there is something bigger within you, you should seek the stars within you to guide you to it all — not some external place or location which may appear to fulfill some aspect of ‘home.’
Your dreams, wishes and … yes … the starlight to guide you in the darkness of not knowing what to do, where to go and how to get thru whatever it is you are going thru is all within you.
Your home resides within you.
You are simply looking for a place to, well, place your home that feels right and true.
That place is unseen.
That place is not really one place <it can actually be many places>.
Here comes the hard part.
Life will not give you any signposts and most of Life will constantly change your direction unseen in the undercurrents of Life.
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“In the short voyage of a lifetime, we can see the eddies and ripples on the surface, but not the undercurrents changing the main channel of the stream. “
Thomas Mellon
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This all suggests you are in control and you are not in control.
Just ponder the fact we often stand upon the deck of our ship admiring the horizon and enjoying the travel & journey only to have some Life undercurrent disrupt our complacency and some version of ‘living Life laziness’ <i.e., if you’re not careful and become actively involved in Life, Life will actively involve itself in your Life>.
This simply reminds us that circumstances beyond our control often disrupt the illusion of what we have, who we are and where we are.
The unseen undercurrent constantly nudges our mind with questions:
What is our purpose?
How can we take control of so many things out of our control?
How do we reconcile the vastness Life offers us … reconcile the bigness that can often appear within reach … and reconcile our desire to be worthy of Life … reconcile it all against the smallness that is us in the roiling sea on which our ship sails?
Will we ever satisfy our dreams for what could be & what we could be?
Meaningful or meaningless?
We struggle with these questions. And all the while we avoid the questions under the guise of “seeking home.’
Ah. Shit.
Suffice it to say, home is not anything physical, it actually resides in the infinite. As a corollary, this would presume if you accept its infiniteness you should be able to see it also has the potential to be infinitely good.
I believe we inherently know this and inherently know that only ‘home’ will truly satisfy us. And that search, that journey, is the satisfaction. I imagine the unfortunate, uncomfortable, truth is the odds are we will never truly find some ‘home’ in which we can live our entire lives.
The world is our ship.
Life is our ship.
Our home, our stars, reside within us.
Ponder.