The Search for Home
I’ve been without a home for 16 months, and it’s made me question what home actually is.
I often say I’m going “home” when I fly back to San Diego to see my parents. It’s reactionary. But I haven’t lived there in 3 years, and haven’t lived with them for 19. I caught myself and thought, “Wait, that isn’t my home anymore. Why do I still say that? Interesting.”
Since completing my walk across America ten months ago, I’ve stayed in six different places for at least two weeks. As the walk was winding down, I didn’t know where I was going to live. There was no obvious place that felt like home to return to.
I stayed at my parents’ for a few weeks, in the Azores, Denver, Costa Rica, and back to Denver to house sit for a couple of friends.
When my two-month trip to Costa Rica was winding down, I sensed that I was ready to settle things and find a space in Denver. I was looking forward to having a home base and finally getting my few things out of storage in Austin.
I noticed that I’d oscillate between feeling grounded and wanting a place I could call mine. I started to wonder what “mine” even means. I’ve moved over 20 times in 19 years, so the idea of home has been interesting to me.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about home and what it means.
What is home?
Is it a place I pay to live and keep all my stuff? Is it the feeling of stepping into a sanctuary?
It took 163 days to complete my walk across America, and I reflect on what home meant during that time. Sometimes we think of home as a physical place. But did I really have no home? Or was it the hotels I was in? Was it the open road? Was it the conversations with strangers I found myself in? There were certainly times I felt perfectly at home on the road.
So perhaps it’s deeper than all of that.
Perhaps it’s a subtle feeling we notice within our heart. One of warmth, welcoming, wholeness, and acceptance. There’s a familiarity to it–sounds, sights, smells, sensations.
It has the qualities of calming and regulating.
But I think more than anything, it’s the sense of belonging.
Belonging is the tractor beam that pulls us in.
While in Costa Rica, I was looking forward to getting back to Denver, finding a place to call home, and settling in.
But as I learned on the road, I do nothing now without surrender. Fully trusting the unfolding of things, and not grasping or clinging to any particular outcome happening in any particular way.
In perfect timing, my friend, John, offered me his home for two weeks while he was traveling.
Well, okay, now I have a beautiful place to stay for two weeks. Why rush to find a place?
Then another friend, Kendall, texted me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to house sit for her for two weeks starting on the exact date John got back to town.
Well, okay, now I have a place in a beautiful neighborhood to stay. Why rush?
Then John tells me that he’ll be gone for a month starting the day before my time at Kendall’s comes to an end, and that I can stay at his place.
Well, shoot.
Is the universe looking out for me here, or is it ruining my plans?
After the walk, I’m inclined to trust the former. And as I have been working on trusting and surrendering during this process, I notice an anxious part of me wanting a place, “home.”
I feel how much that thought puts me in resistance to life. It separates me from the moment that I’m in.
Because it’s saying, “I don’t want things to be how they are; I need them to be different.”
It’s a denial of how life is in this moment. And when I’m in resistance to life as it’s unfolding, I can’t fully live the life that’s here.
I started to see that the feeling of home comes from an idea we hold of what it means.
It hit me.
If I can’t feel at home in my own body, in this moment, then I can never fully feel at home anywhere.
If I’m placing home somewhere outside of me, I limit my ability to feel the very wholeness and belonging I’ve associated with it.
So I’ve been sitting with this, inquiring about it.
Noticing the story that “I’m not home. I need to find a home.”
When I am present, these thoughts subside.
I’m aware of my body and the space around me.
Suddenly, here I am.
How could I be anywhere else?
No space or building can make me experience this.
Any home just reveals to us what already exists within us.
For the first 31 years of my life, I was focused on changing my outside life so that I’d feel better on the inside. But I’ve seen that the external is merely a reflection of the internal.
So when I make home an external place, I am saying that I don’t feel at home in my own body and my own experience as a human.
Perhaps that’s what this period is teaching me.
All those years of moving and the last 16 months of having no specific place to sleep consistently reveal that my discontent with home is really a discontent I have with being with myself, in this moment.
I notice too that I am both immensely grateful for the ability to sleep in a bed and also sense this deeper yearning within. Both experiences can exist simultaneously.
I think there’s benefit in using spaces or places to regulate your nervous system. Certainly, we can create special meaning from specific places, tied to memories or experiences.
But at some point, the work we do on ourselves deepens, and we start noticing the areas in our lives where there is resistance.
What if what we seek externally is a byproduct of that which we do not feel internally?
Even something like home.
If we’re constantly seeking and striving to feel a sense of security within ourselves, it’s a clear sign that we do not feel that way as we are.
That’s the trailhead and where the deeper work begins.
The biggest part of this inner journey for me has been shifting from trying to get my life fulfilled through external sources, and find the space within that is fulfillment.
And to do so while still fully dancing with life. Not escaping it.
How often do we place our well-being or happiness into some future outcome?
Buying the home.
Saving the money.
Finding the relationship.
Having kids.
Getting the promotion.
Moving to the place.
Running the marathon.
Climbing the mountain.
The things themselves aren’t bad. But our attachment to them puts us in a suffering state.
It says, “I won’t allow myself to feel safe, secure, fulfilled, or happy until this happens.”
But even if it does happen, that experience will change too. This is what impermanence teaches us. Then we’re left without the thing we told ourselves we needed to be happy. Or we spend our lives gripping tightly to preserve it. Fearing what would happen if we “lost” it.
It’s a self-fulfilling trap.
So I’ve been asking, where else in my life do I externalize my feelings of wholeness and belonging?
Relying on the outside world to reflect to me that I belong? That I’m part of the crew?
Well, of course, I belong.
Of course, I’m part of the crew.
How could it possibly be any other way?
-Tim
PS If you’re in a season where life feels unsettled, your mind feels loud, or you’re struggling to feel grounded, I created a simple 7-day reset to help you slow down, quiet the inner critic, and feel like yourself again.
