Coming home to myself

Coming Home to Myself

Reflections after Bali, at seventy

What is it about coming home from a holiday?

We go away, we step outside the familiarity of our everyday lives, and somehow we begin to see things differently. We have time to think about how we’re living, the choices we’ve made, the paths we’ve taken and perhaps, most importantly, how we want to live whatever time lies ahead.

I’ve just returned from my first visit to Bali, a journey that coincided with turning seventy. And while I was there, I found myself observing not only the people and places around me, but something much more interesting. Myself.

Other people became mirrors.

I noticed my reactions, my judgements, my curiosity, the things that attracted me and the things that unsettled me. And I began asking myself questions.

What is it about this person that makes me feel this way? Why am I reacting to that? What does my judgement say about me rather than about them?

I know not everyone spends their days wandering in and out of self-reflection. And perhaps too much introspection isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes we need to simply live, without examining every thought and feeling that passes through us.

But Bali gave me something else to think about.

I was struck by what appeared to be a gentle acceptance of life among many of the Balinese people I encountered. As I began learning a little about Balinese Hindu beliefs, particularly karma and reincarnation, I found myself intrigued by the idea that how we live this life might have consequences beyond it.

That our thoughts, words and actions matter. Not simply because of what they bring us today, but because they become part of something much larger.

Of course, I’m simplifying a complex spiritual tradition that I’m only beginning to understand. And perhaps I’m also oversimplifying the Christian faith I grew up with, with its emphasis on forgiveness, redemption and the promise of another life.

But I found myself wondering about the different ways we make sense of our existence.

Do we live differently when we believe our actions carry consequences beyond this lifetime? Does believing in forgiveness change how we take responsibility for the lives we lead? Or is it simply human nature to search for some reassurance that our brief time here means something?

I don’t know.

And perhaps I don’t need to know.

This morning I’m home again, sitting in my chair near the gate, listening to the ocean.

I’ve wandered around the garden, noticing what’s changed while I’ve been away. New growth, plants needing attention, little things waiting to be tended.

And I’ve been thinking about the small, ordinary pleasures that make me happy.

Weeding. Planting. Watching things grow.

Walking to the beach. Getting into the ocean. Feeling that wonderful sensation of the water washing over me.

The ocean has always had a way of doing that for me. It seems to cleanse something beyond the physical. I can enter the water carrying the weight of the world and emerge feeling that, somehow, I’ve let some of it go.

And yet, sitting here, I feel a sadness that I can’t quite explain.

I’ve been calling it grief.

Not necessarily grief for people who have died, although that’s part of it. More a grief for time itself.

For moments that have passed and cannot be reclaimed. For conversations, experiences, relationships, opportunities. For all the different versions of life that have unfolded, some wonderful, some painful, some perhaps not what I imagined they would be.

There is something about reaching seventy that makes time feel different.

Not necessarily because I feel old. Physically, I’m much the same person I was in my sixties. I’m healthy, reasonably fit, perhaps not as strong or supple or quick as I once was, but still very much myself.

It’s more an awareness that time is no longer something I can take for granted.

And perhaps that awareness brings with it a kind of urgency.

Not an urgency to do more, achieve more, travel more or fill every available moment with activity.

Quite the opposite.

An urgency to be more discerning.

About how I spend my days. Who I spend them with. What I give my attention to. Where I place my energy.

Because increasingly, my energy feels precious.

I find myself thinking less about what I should be doing and more about how I want to feel while I’m doing it.

Who are the people I want beside me? What do I want to offer others? What nourishes me, and what leaves me feeling depleted?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: how much of myself am I still willing to compromise in order to be accepted, loved or understood?

For much of my life, I was very good at becoming the person I thought other people wanted me to be.

Different versions of myself appeared in different places. In my work, my friendships, my relationships. I adapted, accommodated, anticipated and adjusted.

Sometimes I did it so well that I wasn’t entirely sure who I was beneath all those versions.

But something is changing.

It’s as though the veil between the person I present to the world and the person I know myself to be is becoming thinner.

And I don’t particularly want to thicken it again.

Perhaps this is one of the gifts of growing older. Not that we suddenly become wise or enlightened, but that we begin to lose our appetite for pretending.

We become less interested in being everything to everyone.

Less willing to spend our precious energy maintaining versions of ourselves that no longer feel true.

And perhaps more willing to accept that some people won’t understand us, or even like us, when we begin to live differently.

So here I am.

Home from Bali.

Back in my garden, listening to the ocean, thinking about what I might do today, tomorrow, next week, next year.

Wondering how to make the years ahead meaningful without turning that desire into yet another expectation of myself.

Perhaps meaning doesn’t always require some grand purpose.

Perhaps it’s found in the ordinary things. In tending a garden. In swimming in the sea. In conversations that leave us feeling understood. In giving our time and energy where they are welcomed and valued.

In noticing ourselves without constantly judging what we find.

In allowing life to be both beautiful and sad, without needing to resolve the contradiction.

And perhaps, at seventy, the most important journey isn’t about discovering somewhere new.

Perhaps it’s about finally feeling free to come home to myself.

Karen 💕