Reentry

The airplane hurled me across the continent and deposited me on home soil. Like an astronaut returning from space, I’d have to reacclimate to the rhythms of the daily life I’d left behind while adventuring in British Columbia.

A dusting of melancholy had settled over me as I drove down the Sea to Sky Highway from Whistler to Vancouver. As the plane lifted away from the ground, I felt my body straining against a gravity of the soul, an aching desire to remain. I’ve only visited the Pacific Northwest a couple times in the past few years but each time the leaving hurts.

Now back home, I felt disoriented. While I was happy to be reunited with my dog, I wasn’t eager to start the rituals of getting my belongings clean and put away in my cozy little home. Getting into my comfy bed, I practiced my nightly gratitude ritual and gave thanks for our safe return home. The words came more from my mouth than my heart.

In the following days the very nice, perfectly good life I had created for myself felt familiar yet strange. Like I’d been inhabiting a role on stage for years, and returning from the time away-- just being myself, somewhere quite different-- had sharpened my awareness of the show’s artifice. Did I even want to act in this play anymore? I felt slightly out of sync and reluctant to fall back in line. I had journeyed outside my comfort zone in nature’s majestic beauty, and the experience was invigorating and inspiring. Something in me had shifted as a result, and my desire to protect that from obliteration by the daily grind was fierce.

I know that the finitude of time remaining ahead of me has something to do with this. How do I want to live in the time I have left? Marching mindlessly through my days to the inevitable end is not a tolerable option, so I need to consider this. Mountains by the sea call to me. But what does that mean, really? Because my life is here. My job, my family, my friends. And we do have mountains in the Northeast, too.

See what happens when I free the imaginative, questioning, rebellious nature of my spirit? Safety and security scurry away like chipmunks when I remember that I have choices, when I remember that I have dreams and desires for my life beyond the standard issue model. Many of us willingly sacrifice our most vital years to furthering someone else’s aims (usually feeding our capitalist economy and supporting the current power structures) so that in return we’ll be comfortable in our old age. This is at best a shaky promise and definitely not a guarantee. And is that even the central goal for my life? To be comfortable in old age, if illness or injury doesn’t kill me before I enjoy a few healthy years in retirement?

Love, please grant me the strength to tolerate the fear and confusion these questions bring. Help me to stay with the uncertainty, and my true desires, and not flee in panic to the refuges of denial, distraction, or narcosis.