Last updated on 2 May 2020
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Your entire life happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself.
-Eckhart Tolle
I thought “home” was merely a physical place. A structure with walls, a roof and a foundation. Something you had to build with hammers and nails and drywall and cement. Something you could touch. The thing that everyone can picture in a second.
It is an actual space where you lay your head at night, where you cook and share meals and stories at a table with family, where you watch movies and sporting events, where you sit quietly and have coffee with the one you love.
Home can be those things. But I’ve learned that saying it is only that physical address of 123 Oak Street cheats on it’s bigger significance.
“Home”, I’m working on now, is even more important a place inside you. It is the space where you truly live. Where you interpret your experiences in the outside world and where they come to root. It is the place where you really experience life. Home is the place where you always are no matter the walls surrounding you or whether you are at work or on vacation or visiting Grandma.
I felt this today during a morning walk along the streets of my neighborhood. As I stepped past the slumbering houses of my neighbors in the pre-dawn light, I understood more than ever the most important home we create is the one inside us. And to do that, one has to live only in this moment.
The most important home we create is the one inside us. And to do that, one has to live only in this moment.
The outside world will be as it is, ever changing, ever reacting to the billions of people who inhabit it. Failing to create this safe, welcoming, non-judgmental place where the warm fires of acceptance, responsibility, and love reside, creates a reactiveness to whatever and whomever crosses one’s path.
Home is both literally a physical sanctuary and a metaphorical jumping off point to learn from the lessons life offers and move forward. It is where we can turn whenever life’s unexpected, chaotic moments come, allowing us the space to decide how we want to be in this moment.
I may have neglected making “home”, this interior space in me, a place for both the hard and gentle times of my life, where both could sit and face each other and honor and respect their right to be here. I have denied the work to create my own solid foundation, walls and roof out of my love, my anger, my sadness, my joy, my fear, my light, my wisdom.
I have left myself vulnerable to always reacting to my situation. To fret. To panic. To fear. I have denied myself the opportunity to experience, even to welcome my strength, my courage AND my fear and vulnerability in an honest and authentic way so I can grow.
I have left myself vulnerable to always reacting to my situation.
When life turns chaotic, I thought as I turned the corner past the middle school that would soon be alive with pre-teen and teen-aged children and their teachers, it is not likely the physical place that’s turned topsy-turvy. It is the home inside you that can feel disrupted.
This vulnerability has led me to live in the past, the present and the future all at the same time: regretting the past, reacting to the present and assuming the worst about future.
Home inside is the place that remains no matter whether the sun shines or a hurricane rages. It is the place of rooting that allows us to consider, to breathe, to waken to reality but which doesn’t change.
Home is that safe place where the light shines even in the darkest time. Home inside is where our love resides–for ourselves, for those closest to us, and to every being.
Maybe it doesn’t matter that I’ve only now discovered this.
Maybe it doesn’t matter that I’ve only now discovered this. As I crossed onto the bike path and headed toward my own familiar house, I understood it’s the six decades of my life that have prepared me to be here with this revelation. Can I change the course of how I’ve approached life’s natural uncertainty to build my house inside? Can I have the courage to “not travel that well-rutted road” in my head that has governed my living up to now?
This feels like my chance to rise out of my reactive sadness to solid acceptance of my life where my responses are authentic, deliberate and based on my values not simply on my emotions.
Standing on the porch of my home, about to open the door inside into a new day, I promised myself this: from this day forward I will build this home inside me. I will construct it out of gratitude for my intrinsic qualities, my frailties, my understanding and courage and my fears. It will be solid and dependable so my loves can feel safe with me, even to find joy in being around me. This home will allow me to share my wisdom and my gifts as I grow so that I can share with others whose homes inside also need built. In my home, I and those around me will never be alone.