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Home

A building, a city, a country, the place you hang your hat, the people surrounding you … all or some of these things. Not being attached to one of these traditional “homes” for half a year now has changed the way in which I think about home. As someone who developed long term bonds with people, organizations and places in Vancouver this experiment in modern nomadism has caused a shift in mindset. I now think of home as less a physical place and more the place you are able to be the person you want to be and do the things in life you wish to do. Where you are comfortable in a social, physical and emotional sense. It isn’t necessarily somewhere you seek out or discover it’s somewhere you construct around you, with the people and community you choose to surround yourself with, the environment you choose to live and play in and most importantly the mindset you place yourself in.

Make no small plans

Once again I’ve found with travel the things you often go looking for aren’t always what end up having the most impact.  Not sure how many finish lines, mountain tops and “experiences” I have chased, yet a simple unplanned moment can easily trump them all.

In visiting Japan I felt that if I visited the cities of my ancestors I’d somehow have an epiphany or at least feel some connection.  So I traveled to the cities my ancestors called home, walked the streets they once did and you know what. No epiphany no spirits speaking to me from the great beyond, not even a remote feeling of connection to this alien place.

Great grandpa, whom I never met, had a saying, “don’t visit me when I’m in the grave”

In going to Japan I was thinking it was the past, the history, discovering things about where my roots lay that would have an impact on me.  Turns out for me the past is the past and it was the now in which I found the most meaning.