23.
I realized today (writing on Sept 4th) that it was 23 years ago that I left England to fly here to America to get married. My fiancée (now wife) and I went through the fun and frustration of getting me a visa to come over as her intended husband, after we had met previously and then endured a long distance relationship.
Once I landed, we had 90 days to get married, and then for the next 2 years she could send me back anytime she wanted, with just one phone call.
How many women get to marry a husband with a return policy :)
But it’s been weird to realize that it’s been 23 years since I’ve seen the land of my birth. I haven’t been back, and my wife and kids have never been over there. People to struggle to understand that, because you’d think that I would have a desire to go back and show my family where I came from, but in all honesty I don’t. Or at least, I haven’t wanted to.
And I don’t know if that’s ever going to change, although I’m pretty sure I’ll have to take them back there sometime.
But it also made me realize that I’ve actually lived in America longer than I lived in England (2 years before all this happened, plus 23 more). Both countries have shaped me, and left their mark on me, and yet neither of them feel like home, and I struggle to understand if that is something that’s good about me, or something very wrong.
Because I don’t feel a need, or a desire for roots in the physical realm.
I think it frustrates my wife when I tell her that our house doesn’t feel like home, but it’s more than our house, it’s our city, our state, this country, or even this world. There are times when I feel so ancient and separate from humanity, like I’m watching it happen while never being fully a part of it. It’s as though it’s a game, an illusion, just another pit stop on the eternal highway to experience and learn from.
For me, a station, an airport, a long drive in the dead of night feels as much like home as anywhere else.
But I also realize that home is not a place, but people. Yet I also know that time and fate can change those things, so I try to celebrate and enjoy the important people in my life while I am with them, aware that there could be timelines stretching out into eternity where that may not be the case.
If you live with the idea that nowhere and no one is guaranteed forever, it helps to keep your awareness and gratitude rooted firmly in the here, and in the now.
Because here and now is all that you ever have, eternally evolving, ever changing.
The past 23 years have been an adventure. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes less so. Each hour, sometimes each moment, has brought change, and wonder, and experience and fear.
Life is a gift, a blessing, a chance to experience all that we can, and to find out who we are in the process. You’ll probably find things about yourself that you like, and others that fill you full of doubt. The truth is that you are you, and you are responsible for you, and to you.
You owe yourself the experience of experiencing life as much as you possibly can.
23 years have passed since England. There is no certainty nor guarantee of another 23 more, although I sincerely hope there is twice that and more.
Where those will be, no one knows. Who will be there, no one knows. I have my hopes and my dreams, my desires and my intentions.
But in the end, all I have is here and now.
And all I am is me.
Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings