Wherever Friendly Paths Intersect

Author Hermann Hesse wrote: “One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home.” Last week I traveled “home” for a work-related conference in Toronto where I captured the photo above of iconic Brookfield Place late one evening. The built-in lead lines in this shot force your eyes backwards along stunning, airy architecture to the soaring front doors straddling Bay Street. Or is this a forward-looking perspective taking your eye, and you, into an unknown future?

Over the past year I have traveled back and forth between my new home in Coquitlam, British Columbia and my former home in Ontario many times. I admit that I have called both “home” yet I’m not quite sure which place IS actually home. Each time I have boarded a plane in Vancouver bound for Ontario I have felt this anticipation that satiates my longing for friends and family. They feel like home! Long, enveloping hugs and familiar faces and places fill my heart with such joy each and every time. And then, after a too-short visit where I still have not visited everyone that I miss, I board a plane again for Vancouver, thinking where did the time go? Wasn’t I just boarding this plane? Yet, surprisingly, I long for my new home in Coquitlam too. The ocean-fresh air, the stark, stunning mountains, the endless opportunities for new photo adventures all pull me back to Canada’s left coast like a magnet. Is this where I belong? Is this “home?”

Perhaps Hermann Hesse is right. Maybe one never does reach home but it’s the people we meet that make home, home. After two whirlwind years of moving jobs, moving provinces and expanding my horizons west, I have finally had some time to take a breath and just be. This time of necessary reflection has taught me to be grateful that home can be anywhere and everywhere. My life is blessed with good friends and dear family who I carry in my heart with me wherever I go. A moveable feast of friends and family!

I will leave you today with another thoughtful author, Tad Williams, who wrote:

“Never make your home a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it – memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.”