Journal: What is Home
May 29th, 2020
Oh! Today is my half birthday!
Today feels like messages have been finding me about true home, shared joy, and the essentials. About finding joy in the slow and everyday, not necessarily by moving quickly, or filling up our days and lives with lots that might not actually equate to happiness.
Danae and I recorded yesterday’s podcast, and a lot of what we discussed was home. Of what brings true meaning and happiness. She shared that a big part of Danish culture is the concept of what is “enough”.
My heart is breaking because I’m realizing just how much, when I look at our lives and the people around me, that we’ve gone to the surface. How much we need things, and trips and outings and so many other people…its seems like we are packing in so much on this search for joy, that we’ve lost the ability to really find it.
It seems this time of being at home, for those of who are fortunate enough to have work and a safe environment, that we’ve gotten so far away from this concept of “enough” that we don’t know how to feel the joys that are right in front of us, let alone how to engage with it.
Recently, I had the weight of not feeling connected to Texas set in again. I’d been racking my brain to figure out where home really is. A value I’ve discovered of mine is feeling intimately connected to the place and culture that surrounds me. I’ve been on this journey of home, and my brain is mush. And I am exhausted.
Today, I made a point to go on my favorite morning walk, while it was still early, down the street with the live oaks. I noticed the abundance of bird songs in the mornings that seem special in the South. The neighbors who also take their coffee on the porch, being in the morning light, spending time among their flowers.
Out of our cabinet stacked with coffee mugs you have to remove like a jigsaw puzzle, I chose one of the five or so I actually use. Today was the chunky, colorful one with the “W” on it.
I looked at my calendar, planned some baking and connecting sprinkled throughout my day. In between sips of coffee I picked up “This is Home” a book by Natalie Walton we’d discovered in an Amsterdam shop on the return from our honeymoon.
The words today were all about eliminating the non-essentials, of being considerate of what we bring into our home, of making it a space where we can dine, create, and be with ourselves and our people comfortably.
Today, on my half birthday, I watched some of my fears about time slipping away soften. What had been building that I was worried was “time lost” has turned out to be quite the opposite.
Because today, I feel the sun, my sweet dog sitting on my lap, my husband whom I can sneak a quick kiss with when he pops out for more coffee, I see my kitchen and a tea candle, and I have what I need.
Despite not being there now, I’ve learned and grown and connected with a place and culture I hope to one day spend time in myself. And in the meantime, I will embrace this shared joy of actuallying seeing that my “enough” my joy, my home, is no where else but right in front of me.
And I might let go of a few of those coffee mugs too.