3.11.24 // We Are Always Home

Maybe we're never meant to find a home in the places that hold us- the places that surround us, the four walls that we come to know and love.
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Maybe we're meant to love these places built of wood, concrete, stone, streets, streams, beams, and cities, but instead of existing in the external world, home merely resides in the internal worlds we each have.
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Instead of a stagnant place, a set of latitude and longitude, that we cling to like the name we were given, home is the mosaic of our memories, the people we hold closest, and the nostalgia we need to feel safe.
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Maybe our home is an alluring mixture of smells: sweet eucalyptus from the Marin headlands, Stumptown coffee brewed by the hands of your great love, desert sage billowing on a warm breeze from Smith Rock.
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Maybe our home is color mixed like an artist's pallet: the burnt umber of the Grand Canyon, the granite that glitters at Yosemite Falls, the Indathorn blue of the sun setting on a horizon filled with mountains.
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Maybe our home is the sweet sounds of comfort: the sound of their breathing when they first fall asleep, the opening cord to my favorite song, the way the wind dances through the trees in the high alpine.
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Maybe our homes are always changing because we are always changing. Our understanding of what home is growing with each new memory, each new love, each new self-discovery.
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Home then becomes at once a seemingly endless opportunity and at the same time a wonderfully simple fact.
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We are home.
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We are always home.