A 20 month journey makes me wonder if I found myself & my world or I have lost a world in the pursuit. Not just me but my several friends would also relate to it as I often hear them talk about this. They all, I suppose, right now are lost and found!
I was super excited to see what a foreign land had and has in store for me. Will and passion backed me up for pursuing education in a distant land. Decisions were easy and emotionally not that difficult to leave home-land as attractive life altering opportunities awaited across the oceans. However, it all comes at a certain price.
One of my best friend says, life circumstances & emotions that we feel are mind boggling at times and living right in the present seems like an only safe place to be! I definitely agree with her on this.
I had left my home for the first time then. I did not understand the gravity of the word ‘left’ until I revisited it after 20 odd months.
Like the fascination towards a new apparel in the wardrobe, the novelty of a new country engrossed me and left me with an impression that what life is offering me now is an out of the world experience. I appreciated the life much more than I had ever done before. I would not hesitate to brag about the nice people I would hangout with. I was proud of the people I work or study with. I have even been boastful of the hardships involved in achieving it. It is as if I was lost in the gold dusted illusion but beneath which it was just the same routine thing. I still am proud and happy about this newly found lifestyle that I have but it makes me wonder about the cost I unknowingly paid for that.
Few years back, after my work I was doing the dishes, may be even moping the floors of my home, sometimes cooking the dinner and laughing with my parents laying on the couch. This time when I went back home, the couch and the laughs indeed were there but I was like the most pampered kid of the family. I did no chores yet was somehow entitled to all the praise and love. It was amazing but it was a lot different! I was treated with utmost care! It was all out of pure love from my family and friends but it came with a subtle unsaid remark that its because I would be going back soon. It reminded me of the fact that I had ‘left’ the house and I now just ‘visited’ it. Indeed, I cannot have it all at one time! I had lost one lifestyle to be found by another one!
As my friend says, this foreign-land and home-land, with all the backpacks on us makes us feel like being on an endless journey and home is nowhere and everywhere based on our perception in the moment! It’s probably like they say ‘only thing that is constant is the change’ and ‘everyday is a journey, and the journey itself is the home’.
I have my own world here as well as there. I have found a space for me but now the boundaries have expanded. My heart is in every place that I visited. Every place that I visited carved me and led me to another. Everyone whom I meet is now a part of my giant family and the world is like a home. I am lost and found every now and then. May be I left one home in the pursuit to be found by an another endless home. It makes me sad and thrilled, low and joyful, distant and at home, lost and found all at the same time.