There has been a change in how I travel. Traveling used to be a matter of leaving home, cutting loose, thrusting out into wild world and waiting to see how it would change me. The world – if you let it – always changes you, but I used to have a clear sense of home being one place and the world being another. Not now. Now, I realize that my home is wherever I am because I take it with me.
My home is not a place nor is it certain possessions. My home is above all a state of relationship. It’s me in the middle of a web or a constellation. I make my home wherever I go because wherever I go I develop intense relationships with the people I meet. Those relationships feed me and inspire me. The deeper I let other people flow into me, the fuller I become.
But the challenge is to let go. The more I learn to let go of the things that burden me and make me heavy – primarily 1) possessions and 2) fear of death – the more those intense relationships can flourish. Beyond a few possessions – my harmonicas, a laptop, a camera, a change of clothes, a toothbrush – I don’t need anything. Realizing that has freed me and made me happy.
The grandeur of my home is measured by how much I can open myself to the gifts that others bring. If I remain tied to the small world that is me, my world only gets smaller and more confined as the years go by; if I can open myself to what others bring, then my fortune is endless.
A wise friend once told me, “Being happy in this life is easy – so long as you don’t care about being either rich or famous.” I am neither, but more and more I am able to live the life that I want. I am not recommending a vow of poverty — far from it. Rather, I have discovered that the more I can let go of material possessions, the wealthier I become.
I open my home to the world — better yet if my home has no walls at all.
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