Going Home
Homer. Have you read Homer’s epic poem, Odyssey? It takes Odysseus ten years to return home to Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War, twenty years in total.
Questioning home. I don’t have the adventure of Odysseus nor the poetry of Homer, but like all of us, I have the possibility to journey home. Have you left your home? Have you attempted to journey home? What was the journey like? Are you journeying home? How long is your journey? How many challenges have you met along the way? How have the challenges changed you? How have things changed at home since you have been away? What did you learn?
Not so literal. Of course, I am not talking about driving the car from Boise Idaho to your home in Milwaukee Wisconsin. I am not even sure that home is a place so much as a space we reside within ourselves.
Home by any other name. To encounter our world at a significant level we need to journey away from home yet to have a robust experience of living we need to return home so that we are connected to our center, our essential self, our spirit, our soul, our core, or any of the others names used for what I call the home that resides within. This is not just a journey for the holidays but being around people we love and people who love us during the holidays may help us truly journey home.
Home free. I do not believe that I am completely home but I do believe I am home more and more often. I also know that home is not just a place for me. Even though I am more at home I also on the road more (and yes, I am at home with paradox). I feel increasingly at home during more times, experiences, and situations.
Monopoly anyone? I will carry around one of the small homes from a Monopoly game in my pocket for the rest of December to remind me of going home and that going home can be very significant and it can also be very small things that take me there.
Your move! It is your move, are you heading home?
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David Zinger is a quiet Canadian who lives on the prairies and loves to write from home. You can find him at home online at www.davidzinger.com at his twitter home http://twitter.com/davidzinger and at home hosting and interacting with the employee engagement network at www.employeeengagement.ning.com.
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David, My life’s quest has been to find home wherever I am, requiring balance, self-knowing, and a sense of humor. Things you possess in abundance! How’s home for you?
Oh my David, you really have a great way of framing this… as I read through it, I found I kept thinking about different people in my family who have been the “travelers and explorers” versus the “home-rooted homesteaders” with a healthy dose of self-reflection about this: How easy (or difficult) might we be making it on each other to come back together (whichever camp we might be in at the time)? To then talk about some of your questions, sharing the journey, instead of pretending they are not the big gorilla in the room, would be so wonderful.
I also love your simple suggestion of carrying a Monopoly home in my pocket. Going to grab one right now!
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Kirsten,
Kind of ironic we quest for something that may be so close. Home is very close to me even while I am 1200 miles away from my physical home. I feel a strong emotional, relationship, and spiritual dwelling in my home with lots of room for visitors.
David
´s last blog ..31 Eclectic Zingers: Employee Engagement Resources
Hi Rosa,
Being in Vancouver right now I should probably have a Hotel and a House from Monopoly right now. If we can just transform some of our judgment into glorious curiosity and ask rather than make assumptions.
David
´s last blog ..31 Eclectic Zingers: Employee Engagement Resources
David, you play the yin and yan of home and self ending up with a game piece in the pocket, well done!
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Steve:
Love your summary, never quite saw it but I am game for it and appreciate that you saw it so I can see it.
David
´s last blog ..Change Management Poem: Out of the Trenches
David–the first time I knew that I was responsible for shepherding and nurturing my sense of home was coming back from a stint in the Air Force (I was delighted to serve with both British and Canadian cohorts at the base in Germany where I worked my last two years of service).
By then, I was able to understand the sense of loss, to maintain some perspective about it. Nothing was the same, even as everything was fine. My addendum to the Thomas Wolfe quote is that, while it is true you can’t go home again, it is also true that you need not go anywhere if you are able to have home in your heart.
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Ah,
Home in are heart and heart in our home.
I am glad I live in the heartland of Canada.
Thanks Rick.
David
´s last blog ..Today at Work: Episode 38 by John Junson