A few months ago, I found myself living somewhere far away from home. I live in a place I never thought I'd live, across an ocean from my family, the schools I attended, the jobs I had, and my friends. Because of the economic realities of my husband's job, I found myself leaving home. But we all leave home. Some people don't physically leave, they live their whole lives in the same town. But home leaves them. Other people come and go, traditions fade, the plant closes, the new industry comes, and nobody can escape the geopolitical forces that shape our world. Our own bodies change. The language we speak changes. The technology we use every day changes extraordinarily rapidly.
We spend so much of our lives building a comfortable cocoon around ourselves. It's made up of what we think defines us. It is the music we like, who our grandfather was, where we went to school, the books we read, the people we have cared about. And then we leave home or home leaves us. And the cocoon is gone. None of these new people know our grandfathers. Nobody gives a flying pig's ass where we went to school. Maybe the music and books we like don't even translate into the language this new person speaks. And it's terrifying! And then you learn that the greatest adventure in life is when you shed your cocoon and fly.
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