There are so many places in the world and the grass is always greener. If we are lucky and live in rich countries with professional jobs, or live simply, we can migrate to many new countries for work. We can try to find that perfect new homeland for living, or if not a homeland at least a place for renewal and adventure.
But when we get there, depending on our expectations, maybe we are disappointed. The great let-down. Wasn't I supposed to feel happier when I moved to this or that place.
I want to come home. But home is not out there. I have traveled and lived all over the world and each time I thought this might be it, home, but it wasn't. Yes, some places have been better for my well-being than others, but there is no sense of coming home.
There is sometimes a sense of coming home after a journey with my whole mind, body, and soul, but it is a certain kind of journey. You cannot package it. It is not for sale. It is a wild journey. The surrealist poets and artists often took this journey and left us aids for the journey, their art. We can renew ourselves with the alienation of wild art. It is a great journey and also coming home.
The Zen teacher Joan Halifax says it best:
Everybody has a geography that can be used for change that is why we travel to far off places. Whether we know it or not we need to renew ourselves in territories that are fresh and wild. We need to come home through the body of alien lands.
Labels: Buddhism, coming home, how to feel less lonely, innovative life writing, Joan Halifax, never mind the beasts, renewal through travel, shamanism, surrealism, surrealist art, visionary travel, wild art, wild travel
