When I came home from my semester in Denmark, I received a lot of apologies. Not as the long-anticipated resolution to a series of feuds that coincidentally happened immediately prior to my departure with everyone I cared about. But because people felt badly that they had to welcome me home from four months of gallivanting through Europe to a city as “boring” as Grand Rapids. This seemed ludicrous to me since I had spent the last two weeks before my return dreaming of sunning myself on the shores of Lake Michigan, dining out for less than eight dollars, and chocolate chips (No, they don’t have chocolate chips in Europe. Anyone considering moving across the pond should take this very seriously. And consider setting up a black market chocolate chip pipeline.).
I think there’s something very obviously damaging about falling into a thought pattern where apologizing for your home seems logical. How tragic that we might feel ashamed of where we live because we don’t think it’s as cool or foreign or cultured as somewhere else. Continuity and history and familiarity can limiting, sure. But they can also be such a privilege.
People travel for gobs of reasons, and I’m positive escapism easily makes the top five. I’m grateful I can say I’ve never gotten on a plane for the sake of putting distance between myself and some person, place, or thing I desperately wanted to forget. But I recognize that “I just had to leave everything behind” has a meaningful place in the travel vernacular.
Every trip I’ve taken has been superficially motivated by something different.
“I want to be deeply affected by building a church in Mexico.”
“I want to learn about the Polish health care system.”
“I think I will only ever live half a life if I don’t seize the opportunity to eat gelato four times in one day.”
But at the end of the day, I decided to travel because it just felt natural. I can’t imagine a life for myself that doesn’t involve getting on a plane within the next calendar year. But I also can’t imagine never being able to come home to Grand Rapids. So no need to apologize: it’s just as great to be in Michigan as it is to be carting a 50-pound suitcase named Andy up a hill in a Barcelona suburb.
Nonetheless, I feel incredibly blessed having been endowed with a soul that’s equal parts voracious-appetite-for-all-that-is-new and still crazy about sucking the marrow out of the time at hand.
On Monday, my “marrow sucking” looked like needing to stop and capture the beautiful everyday-ness of my life right when I needed to hop on my bike and head to class. But sometimes piles of blankets, a well-formed curl, and your kitchen need to be documented.
Show your home some love today.
Happy Wednesday.
