I love being at home. Wherever I am, I try to make that place my home. That is probably why I’m unable to travel “light”. I take with me the printed pictures of my family and friends, my favourite vanilla-scented candle and books…
No matter where I go I always have the same several things with me – thanks to that I can feel that there is a common denominator of all the places where I stay.
Some people ask me why I do it, some other laugh at it and sometimes even consider it stupid. Many of them consider this impractical and say that the best way to travel is without luggage. Perhaps all of them are right.
My home is where my suitcase is
The truth about me is that I love the home. And if I cannot make some place my home, if I don’t feel it – then I don’t like being there. Some people love travelling – I love having a home in various places.
My home is where my suitcase is. Where my laptop is. Where I don’t want to leave. Where I have people who dry the feathers of my wings after I get wet and tired (I love the rain so I often end up soaked to the skin). Where I can find energy that makes me believe that the universe is plotting in my favour, as my friend Dominica often says.
The home is where I have people who love me. And friends… The best of them are those who always remain curious about you. Curiosity means awareness of who I am NOW.
The past is nice and important, but nothing is more important than HERE and NOW – because we all change and everything that we have is our attitude towards one another. If you like somebody you should look at him with new eyes everyday – you need to SEE them. Today, now, at this very moment.
I’m the same as I was. Or not. So much has happened. The whole universe went through my body and that simply had to force some changes. Considering the fact that I constantly surprise myself since I’m unable to keep up with my changes, looking at me like as if I was a thing of the past is treating me like a museum exhibit.
That’s why I love friends who SEE me despite having a whole bag of experiences involving me.
My home is where *I* am.
What does it have to do with home? Well, the fact that it is exactly such relations that create a home. My internal home. The truth is that there are only a few people like that. I think that I’m such person also only for a few people. What we knew about a given person and what we experienced with them often overshadows who they are NOW. But the most important thing is that I have a few people of this kind in my life – it is their pictures that I take with me everywhere and it is them with whom I talk on Skype and Whatsapp.
However, I also know that I can’t always draw energy from them – they don’t always have enough of it for themselves and sometimes they are simply out of reach.
It’s a fact that the past creates certain automations of perception that make our lives significantly easier and simplify relationships. Perhaps these relationships become a bit shallow as a result, but the automations make them clearer and make it possible to spend less energy on cognition.
It’s also a fact that everyone wants to experience unconditional acceptance, a fresh look and the curiosity of another person. Everyone wants that, but they also know that it’s hellishly difficult! When it’s more than just words, more than a slogan and recommendation of some very wise person and we really want to apply it in practice, it’s A VERY HARD THING TO DO. What it requires and what is very often so difficult to meet is tremendous awareness, work and effort – because the only things that come automatically and unconditionally is judging and categorizing. It’s not easy to look at someone we know with new eyes.
Some people are of the mind that they have to know someone for many years in order to consider them a friend. I, on the other hand, think that it’s easier to be a friend when you haven’t known somebody for that long – it may turn into a profound friendship or it may not. But I believe it’s worth giving a shot. That’s why I trust strangers. They don’t wear lenses with a filter consisting of the image of me being extremely mad or totally happy and they don’t remember me being a walking personification of depression or the greatest bellyacher in the world. They see me through no glasses, here and now.
I don’t glorify the time or the past. You can build the most beautiful friendships in the world NOW!!! With a person whom you’ve just met and with whom you have no common past or memories. If you feel that they’re your kind of person, you want to meet them and create some past with them. But first you need to give such relationship a chance. And this requires you to trust such person and not turn them away just because they’re a stranger for the time being. Every friend was a stranger at some point.
The most beautiful friendships of mine came into existence like a fire – quickly and suddenly. And nevertheless most of them persist like the Olympic flame – for a long and peaceful time.
When you form a relationship with a stranger, for example when you travel and you have this awareness of time and you know that this is soon going to end, you are more present and you SEE that persons and they see you. When you have no common past, the present is more infused with the NOW. And then you can experience each other with mad intensity.
This is the beginning and you don’t need to worry about the future of that acquaintance and lose yourself in tolerance, acceptance and masquerade. You are tolerant, accepting and giving, because relationships with strangers are subject to a single rule that you need to accept: you can end it IMMEDIATELY if you’re not ok with something. No explanations necessary.
When you don’t feel the pressure of the past experience luggage then whenever you feel that something is not right for you, you can back out, close the door and walk out with your head up high and your heart in one piece.
Such friendships that come unexpected require you to be open and accept things as they are, without any expectations, hopes or assurances.
You learn how stable your home is when you see how it fares during an earthquake, flood or other disasters. A stranger is a tsunami – either you survive it or it tramples over you and leaves nothing behind. But if you survive it, get up and shake off the dust you know that you’re going to experience something new. Without expecting it to last forever, but only for as long as you want it to last. Because the longer you know each other, the harder it is to look at each other anew each time and the harder it is to remain aware. You need to give the other side some space and accept that you don’t always need to want the same thing. Sometimes you suddenly learn that what you used to love (surprises, learning and discovering the other person) has become a burden.
That’s why I believe that you need to have a home when you travel. Something fixed in the constantly changing world. The curiosity in the way you look at someone you already know as if you’ve just met them – that’s the fixed part of me. That and the courage to open up to friendship before it passes the test of time, as well as trusting my intuition even at expense of being exposed to failure.
First thought, best thought.
I believe in love and friendship at first sight. And… I can prove that it works!!!
