Home Is Where I Go To Rest

As I sit down to write about my trip back to Seattle, I realize that the details of this trip, the things I did, the places I went all don’t matter, because I was home and home is where I go to find rest.

As I landed at the airport and began my trek to my hometown Bellevue, I felt like I could breathe easier - maybe it was the elevation, but maybe it’s because I was settling into familiarity. I know these buses, these roads, these weather patters, but most importantly I know these people. In this place, with these people is where I’m most comfortable.

I’m weary of using the world “comfortable” when describing my life, as I’ve grown to become afraid of living a comfortable life. When it comes to my faith and personal growth, I feel like comfort is the enemy. I know that life is about balancing the daily routines and the spontaneous exciting adventures, but right now I’m not in the head space to live a comfortable life.

For so much of my life, I followed the status quo. I listened to the world around me and followed along with what people told me was right and good because I was convinced that those things would bring me joy. It wasn’t until I began venturing off toward the unknown that I realized that there was so many great things I wanted to accomplish. I started to set lofty goals and I met them. I dreamed about grand travels and I made them happen. All of this made me happy, even though these things weren’t included in society’s manual about how to live a successful and happy life.

In 2017 I accomplished so much. I summited Mt. St. Helens. I went inner-tubing for my first time. I traveled to Thailand with friends. I went to San Francisco twice in three months. I went on a solo backpacking trip.

By the end of summer 2017, I was fully invested in living out my best life. I reevaluated everything, and decided that my job - being an analytical chemist for a pharmaceutical company, was not something I could see myself doing for very much longer. I couldn’t imagine committing to working for the same company and the same job for 12 years like so many people do. So, I put in my 6-week notice, used up my remaining vacation days, and just like that, I turned away from security and certainty and walked into the dark unknown world with nothing but a tiny financial security blanket and a curiosity of what lie beyond.

Many spontaneous decisions later, I find myself in Boulder Colorado with the luxury of traveling at least once a month. But again, my trips home tend to be reminders of what a life dictated by social constraint looks like. As I return 6 months later, not much has changed, or the change I’m told about is minimal. When I think back on what I’ve done in the last 6-months, it makes me wonder if I could have accomplished any of these things had I stayed in Seattle.

I’m not trying to say that Seattle isn’t a good place to live a life of adventure. In fact, I would say quite the opposite. A lifestyle of adventure isn’t constrained by geographical location, but it is dictated by your willingness to ignore the pre-defined scope that you’re given to view your city and world. When it came to my hometown, my heart was so attached to the community-centered, routine-based life I built, that trying to continue my life in Seattle with a radically different intention felt like an abandonment of the relationships I spent so many years building. Loving and serving my friends and community meant doing life together - which required a sacrifice of my time, which is the one thing I never seemed to have enough of to go and live the life I wanted. In this season of my life, I’m choosing to sacrifice the closeness of community and security of routine in order to satiate my curiosity about my neighbors, and to better understand my place in this big and confusing world.

Seattle is still my home and I want home to be a place where I rest and recuperate. I want home to be a place where I can escape the fears and stresses of life, if they come up. I want to be able to return home in order to ground myself when I begin to feel lost in the big world. My friends and community in Seattle are my safe haven. I’ve built up Seattle as a place of rest, so even when I wanted to, I wasn’t able to embrace my adventurous spirit fully in the confines of my hometown. Moving to Colorado, I’ve set myself free from the shackles of comfort - which I unknowingly placed on myself long ago.

Returning home helped me feel more at peace about this chapter of exploration. I’ve released myself from the cage of obligation and expectation, and I have finally given myself the permission to discover my truest self.

Even over a course of 5 days, I wasn’t able to see everyone I wanted, but that okay because I’ll be back before you know it. I’ll just wait long enough to let you miss me again.