Some would say that the truest form of home is found in the body – feeling comfortable and happy in one’s own skin. It’s a worthy state to pursue, to seek. It feels incomplete to speak of home without speaking of physical places, for after all, we are of the Earth – we come from the land and will one day return to it.

The places where we grow up, where we spend our formative years as children, places where we choose to spend our years as adults, places we travel to – they all become a part of our DNA, woven in us like a fabric cloth. To understand what it means to feel at home is therefore also to acknowledge the physical places that shape us, the land that lives in us as much as we live on it.

Feeling at home in a specific place can, of course, be because of many different things: people, nature, beauty, and the subtle energy of the landscape. What is it that makes us feel at home? Perhaps it’s similar to how one meets another, and from the very first moment that their eyes lock, they recognise each other, almost like they knew each other from some distant time. They acknowledge the fact that something deeper is at play; they agree that their connection is no ordinary connection; their meeting was but a coincidence.

Perhaps this same thing happens when we experience new places, when we travel to distant lands and place our feet on Earth that we have never before walked on. There’s a hint of recollection in certain corners of the world, where our spirits remember the energy as if from before. It makes one wonder whether or not we walked this Earth in different bodies before making it into this one, about recognising a person or a place before going there, before meeting them.

And what about those times when we have that sickness in our stomachs, a nausea that grows and grows, an aching for being in a place where we’re surrounded by loved ones and by an environment where we feel like we belong? What is it that we’re missing? We’re homesick, but we’re not sure of the place that we’re longing for.

There are times when home no longer feels like the physical – it’s sometimes something that extends what the senses perceive. How painfully wonderful it is to find home in the eyes of another. The wolf feels an aching so deep within its breast when it crosses paths with a fellow lone wolf, both on their travels, both strayed away from the pack. He feels an aching so deep that his eyes well up with water and his legs grow heavy, and he feels as if all of the strength that he has cultivated through him being strong and courageous can be stripped right away from him with just one shared glance and smile.

There are times when home feels like the place you just came from, the place where you left your friends and loved ones, but you didn’t actually want to leave because your energy was so tied down to the land and to the people, and you knew that you felt at home but not completely because your idea of home was still tied down to the place you had left prior to that place, and you knew you had to leave because you could just feel it inside your gut, but at the same time you lost your mind thinking about how unfathomable it is that such a phenomenon as this one can even exist.

I typically feel this when travelling. I suppose in these times, finding home within ourselves – inside our body – is the only way to comprehend and navigate the complexities that the human experience can sometimes pose. Wherever we are at any given point truly is exactly where we need to be.

Humans are emotional and intelligent and curious and creative, and so we surely cannot refuse to acknowledge the way we feel about specific moments or places or people or things. Saying goodbye is a part of the human experience. We cannot hold on to things or people or places so tightly because the idea that nothing lasts forever is one that has a high probability of being true. How sad it is to think that the end of something may always be near, even before it begins.

But how free and liberating it is at the same time. We must let ourselves feel sad and depressed and confused and in love and out of love and angry and connected and disconnected because the human spirit is wild and free and sensitive and kind. This pain that we know exists in this life must not hold us back from connecting with people and with places, because it truly is wonderful to feel loved and safe and at home, and that state is one that is a birth right of being human. We must love. We must love hard, and we must love true.

Becoming aware of this thought process – the idea that permanence may be false – puts one in a space where one can make a choice of how one wants to perceive reality. We can see this as something that is dark and grim, that the end is always coming and that nothing is worth doing; or we can view it as life being a precious gift that is never guaranteed, that every moment is so lovely because it could be our last, that the gods in the sky envy us because we are mortal, and that goodbyes don’t exist because everyone is destined for the same end, an end that is glorious and beautiful and earned and deserved.

When the wolf crosses paths with a fellow lone wanderer, he’s reminded of the times when he was a young cub, so small and helpless and afraid and empty. Giving all of one’s self to another is what causes a man to fear death because the ground shakes and the wind blows and the universe shifts into a heavenly realm where life exists in sanctuaries high in the mountains, blankets of white clouds hug the ancient rock and stone houses of a sweet, quiet, and peaceful village surrounded by still gardens and slow-flowing streams.

He soon realises that his fellow lone wanderer meets him in this place, where he feels small and helpless and afraid. She meets him, and she sees him, and she accepts him. And this is enough to make him feel true, to make him feel strong enough to face the needs of his days.

Oh, how lovely it is to find home in the eyes of another, to see your reflection looking back at you like you’re gazing into a crystal ball – so lovely that at the immediate sight of such one instantly regrets it, for although it is so lovely, one knows that such connections can bring great pain and suffering if the experiencer is ill-prepared, and such connections require great strength and courage to navigate well.

We always forget about this though because such connections are just so heavenly that nothing else in the world seems to matter when we’re experiencing them. When we see ourselves in another, our hearts and souls can be at ease, for they too must see themselves in us – there is no possible way that it can be otherwise; that must surely be the law of the universe, and it need not be explained.

When home is neither in the place that we came from nor the place that we’re going to, perhaps that is when we are truly living, and that is when we find home in the eyes of the great sky above our heads, the moon and the sun, and the doors of perception that open into eternity. Maybe we’ll be forever chasing home on the other side of the horizon, behind us and in front of us.

When we lie down to sleep tonight, we’ll give thanks to the great spirit for the breath that fills our lungs, and in the morning if we wake, we’ll step forward once more, remembering that home is not something we chase but something that rises within us as we move through the ever-unfolding mystery of being alive.