This is home

After traveling to Grand Rapids, Toronto, Québec, Montreal, Austin, New Orleans, Oklahoma, Houston, and San Antonio, I’m back home.

The main takeaway? I’m not from there; and I’m not from here either. We’re all citizens of the world. We find love, and passion, and art, and music, and culture everywhere we go, if we take the time to pay attention.

Home is a concept we made up to have an excuse to come back. To come back to our comfort zone, to the things we know, to the stories we’ve built. But we are not rooted anywhere and our place in the world shouldn’t be determined by our passport cover. We don’t need an excuse to come back to who we are. And neither to return to what what makes us feel safe.

Finding our identity, character, and personality is a life-long pursuit, and it won’t get easier by taking a plane and moving away. A real getaway means thinking and acting differently. It means taking risks.Failing. Regretting. All while learning about yourself.

We are meant to pursue moments that take our breath away. Instances of inspiration. Pieces of faith. We are meant to build ourselves continuously; anytime, anywhere. Escaping shouldn’t include a plane ticket and an itinerary to nowhere; finding yourself happens locally.

Although I visited ten different cities this year, I’m not different because of the trips I made and the adventures I lived. I’m different because what I interpreted of those stories. I am who I am because of the meaning I attributed to the experiences, the people, the places… Going anywhere in the world won’t make me a different person if I don’t take the time to live each moment at its fullest, and then to look back and learn from my mistakes.

These are pictures from my latest trip in Guatemala.

The places? Petén, Hun Nal Ye, Semuc Champey, Candelaria, Lachuá, and Lanquín.

The lesson? I still don’t fully understand who I am, but I think I’m getting closer (and not precisely by going further away).

The challenge? To be able to know myself better. Either here, there, now, or then.

The takeaway? There’s no such thing as ‘home’. Home is where you are able to learn and to grow (and here’s a hint: it happens anywhere).