Why leave home?
Driving through downtown Ashland, Oregon, the other day, I was startled to witness a couple of gangs of young bucks, their antlers still soft and fuzzy, cruising Main Street. I’m used to seeing deer in town because we’re situated in an alpine valley hugged close on all sides by mountains. The deer and other critters virtually live in our yards, and local motorists are always on the lookout for deer on the streets. Usually, though, one spots does, not bucks, or a small group of does with one or two young bucks. Why were all those teen bucks hanging out together?
“They’re coming into their first mating season,” my outdoorsy, thirteen-year-old daughter informed me. “They stick together until they find females, then they split up.”
That made sense, and thus relieved, my imagination traveled to thoughts of leaving home. Not so many months ago, those purposefully strolling bucks lay cuddled up against their mothers in the shade of some backyard glen. But now they’d left home to satisfy a biological contract.
And you and I—why did we leave home? Why do we leave home? Do we leave because we’re curious? Stupid? Ungrateful? Reckless? Hungry and thirsting for adventure? In a way, leaving home contradicts our herd instinct. We like safety, regularity, routine. Don’t we? Or do we desire constant change, the stimulation of danger and the unknown? At this point in our evolution, it’s surely a bit of both for most of us.
No matter how we describe it, we leave home to find ourselves and to claim our independence. Whether the experience turns out good or bad, we do it because we want to. We leave to find ourselves, and we return to share the new, the more complete people we’ve become. We come back to share the news.
Leave-takings and homecomings…sadness and celebration, the unknown and the remembered place. Much of our inner debate is consumed with these matters, and then one day, perhaps, we understand that we never really leave home at all. Home is inside us, and no matter where we go, no matter where or what or who we call of associate with home, they’re really all add-ons to the perpetual home within.
Funny that those adolescent bucks led me to think about home. I’m grateful to them, and surely to the hearth and home that is still burning and holding sacred space in my heart.
Write a poem or journal entry about home, or leaving it, or returning. If you feel like sharing, please send it along.