Tag: meditate

The Homes I Can Never Go Home To Again

The Homes I Can Never Go Home To Again

Ruben’s Atomic Chicken Fingers!

I unexpectedly found myself back in an area I briefly lived in about 30 years ago. A break in the meeting schedule and I was free to roam around for a few hours and I spontaneously decided to retrace some footsteps I had left three decades earlier.

Driving around brought me back mentally and emotionally. I even found a Spotify playlist of 1990’s alt-rock and grunge to bring me back even further. Salem to Nashua via Rte 111. Much was the same. Much was different. I knew I was different, much different than who I was back when I first traveled these roads those many years ago.

And then I remembered Ruben’s Atomic Chicken Fingers.

The more youthful me would find himself many a night belly to the bar at Shorty’s Mexican Roadhouse, never a need to review their rather extensive menu. I knew what I was there for, and the only question was for how many.

Lightly breaded, deep fried chicken fingers served with a sweet-yet-hot thick and sticky dipping sauce, the sweetness lowering your guard making it easy for the heat to find its way down the back of your throat. A cold beer at the ready and at that moment everything was perfect with the world.

I found my way into Shorty’s once again and at the same bar I excitedly ordered the same Atomic Chicken Fingers and I was ready to pick up where I had left off. But one bite in and I realized something had changed. 

And it wasn’t the chicken fingers.

I’d always heard you can’t go home again. I understood that to mean time inevitably changes what home had always been. What was simply no longer existed as it was. But at the bar, I realized the only thing that had changed was me. I couldn’t go back to what was because I was no longer who I was. It wasn’t the food. It wasn’t the bar. 

It was me. 

I outgrew the memories.

I was the reason why I couldn’t go “home” again.

There is a perceived comfort of going home again, even if home wasn’t a very comfortable place to be. But it’s familiar, predictable, and known which tempts us to want to relive and cling to and even slightly revise the narrative to accommodate what we may have wished home actually was. 

But you can’t really go back because you’re no longer who you were when you were originally there.

I appreciate all the homes I can never go home to again. The physical and the emotional. They were important parts of who I was, foundational building blocks of who I am. But who I will become? That needs me to allow myself to outgrow myself, to not let the lure of the certainty of the past prevent me from moving forward into the uncertainty of the future.

The past had its place, but it’s no place to live. It served its purpose, it was an important teacher, but holding on to our yesterdays weakens our grip on our tomorrows. 

When we create an emotionally clear space to grow, it’s likely we will do so.

Photo by Victor Bouton on Unsplash

Moving Beyond The Easy, The Convenient, And The Good Enough

Moving Beyond The Easy, The Convenient, And The Good Enough

I didn’t like the process, but I loved the results.

The prep for a routine medical procedure included the elimination of some of my favorite foods for a week ahead of my appointment. It wasn’t quite fasting, but it might as well have been given what was on the list of foods I could eat.

A week later, I was surprised to feel so much better.

Many of those favorite foods were nothing more than habitually consumed foods, favorites by default based upon the frequency of indulgence. Easy, convenient, and good enough, three attributes you’d never use to describe a healthy relationship.

With food or with people.

My mini cleanse was an opportunity to reset what I was consuming, a chance to take a break from and to re-evaluate what I was willing to put into my body. An opportunity to make decisions more intentionally aligned with the healthier vision I have for myself and less out of habit.

I’ve been cleansing other parts of my life as well. My energy. My tribe. What I am willing to tolerate. What I’m no longer willing to accept.

Stepping back we may find we’ve become consumers of a great deal of toxicity in the world we’ve built around us, a world built more out of habit and less out of intention. We can see where we’ve habitually chosen the easy, the convenient, and the good enough relationships, opportunities, and situations which have left us feeling sluggish and diminished, emotionally winded and lethargic.  

Life has repeatedly shown me that in every moment we get to decide if we are willing to perpetuate what is or willing to forge a different, more authentic path forward. We can either feed the habits which leave us vibrationally hungry or cleanse ourselves of the toxins which poison the path on our way to becoming who it is we are willing to become.

The moment is awaiting your decision.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash