March mindfulness. Mind full.

Home is where the heart is.

I’ve been pondering much on home, and all what that means, recently. I say recently: it feels as if I have been mulling over ‘home’ in my heart for huge parts of my life, inbetween just getting on with living in whatever home I am in at the time.

Home. Where the heart is. But what do you do when you have left your heart, or little bits of it at least, in various places and you can’t (easily, for anything is possible) go back to visit them? You can’t become reacquainted with those pieces of your heart you left behind, fitting them back into the You who you have become since then. You can only try to recognise in yourself those other parts of the world, the other parts of your life.

And what do you do when someone leaves you, taking tiny – or not so tiny – parts of your heart with them? You can’t say, ‘Oh, give me back that little sliver, that huge chunk, I can’t live without it,’ because it’s not possible. Once gone, it’s gone. Gone for the good of you, keeping you in relationship with the person who dared to leave you. And I’m talking children here, people, children who grew up too quickly and dashed off to have all manner of adventures. On their own. Without you. Just as it should be.

You carry on living, that’s what you do. You don’t die of a partial heart, but you don’t live whole-heartedly either. Part of your heart simply isn’t there. So it doesn’t matter how exciting your life might be right now, or how many adventures of your own you are having, or how settled and happy you are in your Nice Little Life, all safe and cosy: no, deep down you know you only live partially.

And that’s what we do. We live, knowing that we would like to be in two places at once. More, if we are honest with ourselves. Our hearts are at rest where we are and yet longing for Other: Other Places, Other People. We live with dichotomy, with paradox.

But look at it another way. Look at how rich your life is, how widespread your heart across countries, across continents, on the other side of town. You are filled with more experiences than you can count, simply by having been somewhere else. Your heart grows: with love for places, for people, through amazing experiences, encounters with others: new relationships.

Truly, it is a gift. To be able to share one’s life, give one’s heart away to others. A gift.