Where is Home?

If someone told you to go home, where would you go? If someone asked you where home is, would your answer be different? The word "home" is an extremely fluid concept. To some, it's wherever you sleep at night, to others, it may be where you grew up, where you've spent the most time maybe. Some may not see a house as a home, but rather refer to a city as home, or maybe even a country.

This is my home, not for the building, but for the memories.

I invite you to consider this idea: Home is about experiences, not places.

In some ways, Bellingham is my home. It's the first place I ever lived alone; the city where my very first house is and always will be. It's where I earned my undergraduate degree, met professors, exchanged ideas, pulled (surprisingly) only a single all-nighter. In Bellingham I learned what bad roommates are, and I learned what great roommates are. I sprained my ankle 6 times in the 3 and a half years living in Bellingham, recovered from one broken heart, and suffered one concussion. I made best friends, and I lost best friends. A single fender bender, 3 calls to 911, and one major legal scare later, Bellingham has been host to some of the most defining points to my life. If I had stayed in Covington after high school, or gone to college in Seattle, or New York, or Alabama, I would be a different human being than I am today. So, more often than not, if someone asks me where home is, I'll tell them Bellingham, Washington.

Times like these made my college dorm home...

So what about all the times I've been at work in Bellingham, so excited to go "home" for the weekend? If Bellingham is home, why do I say I'm going home to Covington? Is one more home than the other? Not at all. They're home differently. Covington is my childhood. It's where my parents raised me, where I learned to drive, where I came out to my best friend. It takes credit for the first time I tied my shoes, all my years playing team sports, and the time I knocked my best friends teeth out playing chicken on a Big Wheel. It is every Christmas morning and Halloween night trick-or-treating of my life. As much as I can't stand Covington, it's always going to be home.

I owe my childhood to Covingon.
I'm the cute kid having her elbow bitten,
my sister is the one ready to punch the camera....

I love Bellingham, I less than love Covington, but I love who I grew to be in both places. Both will always be home. They will be the first two places in a never-ending list of "homes." Give me a month, and Morocco will forever be on my list of places I call home. And if I never came home from Morocco the rest of my life, and forty years from now somebody was to ask me where home was, Covington would still be a perfectly valid answer. Because physical location is forever evolving.

There's a Heraclitus quote that I've always loved: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man." This is why the concept of home is about experience, not location. One hour from now, Covington will be a different place than it is right now. And one hour from now, I won't be the same person I am right now. We as a population, and as individuals, are always changing and evolving. But once you experience something, nothing can take that experience from you. Home is an ever-evolving compilation of experiences.

So if you want to find home, don't talk to a real estate agent and buy some house somewhere. Go for a walk. Experience your surroundings. Talk to your peers. Explore somewhere new. Make yourself a part of your community. Follow these steps, and only then, you will find a home.

How Do You Say Goodbye For 26 Months?

I'll be the first to admit I'm inept at goodbyes. They generally end with an awkward hug/high-five/fist bump confusion and a last minute "see you later!" Only for me to walk away suddenly feeling like an idiot knowing the chances of literally never seeing that person again in my life. So what is the proper formula for a goodbye? Or is there one? Have you ever actually met someone that's "good" at goodbyes?

As I enter my last month in the United States, saying goodbye is becoming a daily occurrence, often even hourly. Here's what I've learned: Don't make it more than it is, and don't ignore it. 

I often get a romanticized idea of goodbye's in my head. I picture myself climbing onto a wagon and taking off down the Oregon Trail, never to see the old homelands again. This idea of 'never seeing people again' takes over the irrational portion of my brain and blows it out of proportion. Don't do this.

Alright, maybe in the days of piracy and New World exploration, a goodbye was final. Once you left, that was it. But this is 2012. The Wright brothers have come and gone, Alexander Graham Bell gifted us the telephone, and Zuckerberg has enrolled half of the world's internet users. I'm not really falling off the grid here. At the most I'm simply tuning my Facebook posts down to once every few days from slower internet, and paying more for phone calls. The goodbye's are merely physical.

I think that is why I often forget I'm saying a goodbye, and where my odd "see you later!"'s come from. I know I'll still interact with these people, so what exactly is this 'last' connection with them, if not a goodbye? For some, it very well may actually be a "see you later!" Just... a very long later. Others, it may be the end of a face-to-face relationship, and the conversion to a simply online, networking based relationship. You follow each other, you catch up with each other once in awhile, use each other as resources for future life en devours.

But sadly, it is inevitable that some actually are goodbyes. Forever. We all hate to admit it, but sometimes, you just fall away from people. Without school, work, mutual friends, you just seem to... lose touch. It's not vindictive, it isn't even all that sad sometimes, it just happens. You don't really actually have anything to hold a friendship together, you're friends on Facebook but never even virtually interact, and even when you live two blocks apart, you still don't see each other without a big social gathering forcing your paths to cross. It's just how life works.

And this is why I say don't make it more than it is. Time will run it's course. Corny as it is, if you're meant to be friends, you'll stay friends. This is what I've learned while my time in America slowly dwindles. The people I never saw as huge parts of my life came out of nowhere and became my best friend's in a matter of weeks. And the people I thought were the center of my universe I often managed to simply not see. And sometimes that sucked. But sometimes, it just never crossed my mind until the opportunity to see them had already come and gone, and my only option for response was a shrug.

But how do you know who will fall in each category? How can I be sure that reaching out one last time to someone I haven't seen in awhile won't spark a friendship back up? Or that someone you see everyday now won't end up being impossible to stay in contact with? The simple answer is this: you don't.

So again I say, don't make your goodbye's more than they are, but don't ignore them. Make time to see people still. Don't worry, if you have to stay up all night to pack, it will be worth it. You can even try to have a friend come over while you work -- kills two birds with one stone. The last week straight I have gone out to dinner every night with a different person. Sometimes it's somebody that I also had lunch with last week. But sometimes, it's somebody that you haven't seen in over six months, although you've always intended to meet up at some point.

That is what's important. Reach out to people. Make sure you show people that they really mean a lot to you. Go out of your way for the people who have gone out of their way for you, but leave time available for people you rarely see to also realize they want to see you once more. If they've waited until the last possible moment and want to see you still, don't ignore them, but don't ignore yourself. Let them know that you're busy, but give them another option ("Wanna come chill with me while I sort clothes into a 'keep' or 'Value Village' pile?"). People will often say yes.

But always remember one thing: No matter what, tomorrow will still be show up. So don't stress it that much. Do what you can, and accept life's course when you run out of time. I'm still going to get on that plane January 13th, whether I saw everyone I wanted or not. Whether I bought the extra socks I needed or not. Whether I remembered to pack that mug I wanted to save or not. It's going to happen, and that's a glorious thing.