It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed, is you.
~ Eric Roth
You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.
~ Maya Angelou
The prospect of going home is very appealing.
~ David Ginola
I’m going ‘home!’ In the past seven weeks I have sat on the shore of the Rideau Lake, not far from my childhood ‘home!’ I left rural Ontario and headed to the city just out of university! I have lived in the GTA for almost 30 years. I thought I never looked back. Or did I? In this familiar place I have no immediate family left, I have no childhood home, and yet I still feel the same connection to the earth that I planted my feet on as a child and I still call it ‘back home.’
The quiet reflections in this place have allowed me time to think about the life I have created for myself. And I realize that my experiences along the 30-year journey have taught me many lessons. One most important … NOT EVERYONE CAN GO HOME! I made a choice to leave my rural roots but I always knew I ‘could go back home.’ This is ‘home!’ I can feel it, I can hear it, I can smell it and my heart holds it dear!
However, I’ve changed. I want ‘to go home,’ to the GTA, to the home I have purposefully created, to all that is familiar. A life I have created and that I am so grateful for. I dare say that all of us that ‘can go back home’ should quietly reflect on what it must be like for our friends and colleagues who can’t go home. And to be awed by their resilience and courage to make this strange land their home. Even when ‘back home’ is not an option.
The past seven weeks has afforded me the opportunity to be grateful for the life I have created. I’ve had time to reflect on how much of my heart and soul I have invested in my home and my life. And how much of one’s heart and soul is home! Emily Dickinson said “Where thou art, that is home.”
Written by Deborah Lavender, BMG Senior Consultant
Photo Copyright: lvan Kamzyst, 123RF
