Boxes

Writing prompt this week: HOME.

I don’t know what home is. My mom told me once that she’s always thought of Cissna Park, IL as home. Where you were raised, that’s home. I don’t agree with this.  Sure, New Bern, NC has a certain nostalgia to it that breeds a kind of familiar, predictable comfort, but it’s not home. 

Perhaps the distinction lies in how a person thinks home should feel. So how should home feel to me? I can only do this by deciding how I want to feel first. I like to feel adventure. I like unknown, to an extent. I like surprises, so long as they are surprises of self-discovery. Like moving to North Dakota. I thought of it as an adventure in which I would discover all kinds of new things. That’s what I like. I like discovering myself. 

I place myself against different backdrops to see what happens to me. Maybe like a chameleon: trying out different camouflage to see which one fits best.  I fit myself into the surroundings, adjusting, changing, and contorting parts of my mind to fit with a new reality. I like to adjust. I like to see how I can fit.

Strangely, this feeling is freeing. I might be trying to fit myself into a given confining box, but in the end I always surprise myself with how well I can fit into it. I relish the feeling of fitting. And then when the feeling fades and gets old, I climb out and move on to the next shape. This surprise and opportunity to self-discover moves me and motivates me. I feel at home. I connect to myself more than at any other time.

Home is only where the different lighting of a situation shines on some undiscovered part of myself.

So put me in a new box. I bet I can fit into it.