Being Home...The Power of Pause

Sometimes in our lives, we simply need to return home. The reasons are many. We may need to rest, retreat and re-charge. We may need to and re-group and re-assess away from the busyness and clatter of everyday life. We may be vulnerable or have lost our way out there.

Or we may be in lock-down because of covid-19. This is an unprecedented and unexpected call home. Millions of us all over the planet are spending more time at home now than we ever have. And while it's difficult and uncomfortable for some, ideally home is our refuge. It's our place of belonging where we can be ourselves. The reason for being home just now may be forced and unfamiliar, but the results of being home can still be what they've always been. Home literally holds space for us to return to our deepest sense of knowing.

Seeding the future. I've been ineluctably (great word - look it up) drawn into the garden to grow food in these lock-down weeks. My garden is tiny and steep so I've enjoyed creating random pockets of space between rocks and branches. It's not what I expected to be doing with this unscheduled chunk of at-home time. I've been pottering rather productive and distracted rather than focused. But the primal pull to sow seeds and grow food looms large in uncertain times. While on the physical level it's about being pragmatic and more self-sufficient, there is a lot going on here at other levels too. And today, the last day in complete lock-down in our little land, I realize something has been born in these weeks when I thought I was frittering the days away.

Home is so much more than a building in its environment. It is a state of being. Home has a vibe and it has a lineage. When we're home we remember who we truly are and what is ours to do. We make clear choices about what to cherish and what to let go of. We act from intuition and we trust what we know.

 

 

 

Just like homing pigeons, something innate in us knows when it's time to go home. If we've been away from home too long, we loose our glow. Our eyes loose their sparkle and there's no spring in our step. We're dried out. We heed the call to go home when we're nudged by inspiration or desperation. When we are ready or past ready.

But right now, across cultures and across continents, much of our human family has been called home at the same time for the same external reason. And unless we're in the middle of crisis ourselves, we're noticing things. We are settling into slowing down. Life is simpler. And quieter. We're starting to feel the power of the pause. Some of the relentless pull to be out and about has transmuted into being right here right now. Because we can't go far off our properties, we do what we can with what we've got. We're remembering that being resourceful is fulfilling.

 

During our return home we've also changed the way we structure our day. We work remotely from home. We shop on line. We connect with each other through our devices. And the people we see face-to-face are our immediate neighbours and community. We watch out for each other and we exercise and do our lives locally. After nearly five weeks of living like this, it is starting to feel good. 

So this planetary pause is a portal for us to re-imagine our human existence. The way we did life before wasn't really working. We were on a slippery slope but had resigned ourselves to it being modern day reality. While some of us may have created a life with a slightly lighter footprint, there was still a sense of sad inevitability about humanity's future. Until now. Globally we now have the opportunity to create the foundations for a new era more aligned with being fully human.

 

Home has four rooms. "There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms - a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

And the Maori sense of well-being, Hauora, is similar. It comprises taha tinana (physical well-being), taha hinengaro (mental and emotional well-being), taha whanau (social well-being), and taha wairua (spiritual well-being). Each of these four dimensions of hauora influences and supports the others.

 

 

 

Re-entry. In our time at home, a lot of us have remembered our many-layered selves. Being home is regenerative. It is a time of incubation of new imaginings, priorities and opportunities. We are refreshed and re-vitalized. In the myths of most cultures, there then comes a day when it is time to go back out into the world. That time can be bittersweet because it usually means re-entering the old world with our new found ways.

Reset. But when we come out of lock-down, the old world won't be how it was any more. Our reality has been reset. What it looks like is not yet clear, but if we can imagine it, we can collectively create it. It's time to bring the thread of what we've each learnt in our time at home, and weave it into the new human fabric. 

Reframe. I did this painting just before covid-19 entered and changed our world, and now see it in a whole new light.