Not Truly Homesick

I felt like I was starting to go through the feelings of homesickness, mostly because I don’t have a particular date on when I am going to come home. This open ended trip brings the sense of never returning. It brings the feelings of goodbye, but in a way where you don’t know when the next hello will be.

And when I look at this emotion of homesickness, when I really digest it and let it marinate, I can see I have felt this feeling before. I’ve felt it on a bad day in the cafe, or when I have been sitting at home alone, feeling homesick within my own space. At the time, I called it something else, but the emotion is still very much the same.

Part of my ache to go travel was merely a want to be anywhere but the place I was in. I had some idea that travel would answer the questions that constantly played in my mind. And isn’t that what we always do? Dislike our present, so we start looking to the future. We’re always wanting to finish work, get to Friday, go on holiday, go home, go visit someone else or want that someone to go away. We can’t wait for Christmas, to finish our studies, to go back to study, to leave home, to get married, to retire. It’s always future future future.

As soon as we settle into our present environments, our reaction to our external environment changes and we go inward, and if that going inward becomes uncomfortable, we go back to blame our external environment again. It becomes that person, or this situation, or our job, car, relationship. But these feelings would not arise if the feelings weren’t already there. These feelings are our reaction, and when we look at the timeline of our problems, we see a similiar theme to how we react to our surroundings. Is it always with anger, and frustration? Or do we always run away, with the fear of the pain that might arise if we stay? Do we turn to our addictions; social media, food or stimulants?

So now when I look at my homesickness, I don’t see it as wanting to go home. I see it as a longing for the connection that I seem to lose every now and again. Perhaps is it a sense of the connection that I never felt I truly had so I would distract myself from these feelings with new environments and a secret hope that the change is in that new place.

And simply from writing this out, I am already processing this emotion. I am coming to terms with it. I am reaffirming to myself that this is not my true nature, but a symptom of an egoic belief that I am alone. The belief that there is something wrong with being alone. Yet when I sit here, and breathe, and look past the pain and fear, I realise that it actually feels nice to just be alone and just breathe. It feels nice once we quieten the mind and look at our emotions for what they really are and stop putting a narrative to it.

Once we realise that there is nothing to do, no goal, there is no place to go and we allow ourselves to just be and be okay with that, life turns to bliss. We create some space for the real creativity to rise. For our true nature, untainted by fear and desires, to rise up and lead us to a life that is truly more fulfilling.

When I get asked as to why I do yoga asanas, my main answer is that it gives me awareness. From the day I walked into my first class. First I learned that I could sit with the discomfort of my body, and that I could observe, breathe and work with it while being in the pose. Then I discovered that I could also do that with my mind. That we can experience feelings that make us uncomfortable, separate ourselves from that and then work through it slowly. To just breathe and deepen into it. To properly learn from it instead of being caught up in it.

Traditionally, yoga is a stepping stone towards meditation, self-realisation and samadhi. For me, it’s a way of practising contentment in the present, to not get caught up with the thoughts and to remember what I’m doing here in this life that I have been granted with. If you can be okay with every moment in your life, and even come to peace with not being okay, then I feel that is just good as finding enlightenment.

Blessings of shanti with each and every step…