Homesickness is a feeling.

Homesickness is a feeling.

That’s a truism, if ever there was one.

But what I mean is this: when I miss home, I don’t miss a place, I miss a feeling. The feeling of belonging. But why?

At the most basic level, we all belong to each other. No one does anything alone. Yes, I know so-called modern culture is built on the myth of “I worked hard and made it on my own” but the truth of the matter is that no one did anything alone. The most “self-taught” of persons depended on tools and inventions made by others, not to mention growers of food and purveyors of water, and (in most cases) plumbing and sanitation they did not built for themselves. And hurrah for that! Humans are as interdependent as it comes.

So what is it I miss when I miss a sense of belonging?

Sometimes, it is the feeling of normalcy, by which I mean what I grew up with as common. For years, whenever I got off a plane in Copenhagen to visit family from wherever I lived, my first, completely involuntary, thought was: “Thank God I’m back where people are normal!” The irony is that the longer I lived elsewhere, the more I was able to see Danish culture and behavior from the outside and so it really no longer was “normal,” it just was.

Sometimes, what I miss is a cocoon of protection, some bulwark against the demands of adulting. The feeling I have when I walked too far, literally or figuratively, and just want to be teleported “home.”

I woke with that feeling today. The antidote is presence and love. I have that too.

Next up? Wednesday June 8 online vinyasa practice 16H30 UTC (12:30pm in Brooklyn, EST). See you there?