Home is in the Heart

As a storm prepares to hit my hometown, I’m reminded that home is not outside of us, but within us. When everything was taken away after Katrina, a storm my family survived but in which we lost much, I learned that lesson in the extreme. Never before had I been so grateful for my friends and family. Never before had I felt so close to all the people I had known growing up there, people I normally took for granted. Eventually, things evened back out, but obviously occurrences like these are not always predictable. Our world is full of unpredictable events such as wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and more. We can’t always know how our world will look tomorrow, but it if we are able to center ourselves in our hearts and see beyond outside appearances, we can weather the storm.

When things are taken away in the physical world, it can be shocking and disorienting if I am overly connected to them. If I believe the physical world is all there is, then I might feel extremely lost when the things around me change. But if I open myself up to the reality that the physical world might not always exist the way it does now, and accept that my heart is the center of my world and my true self, it becomes much easier to walk through these changes.

I’m holding all of my friends, family, and people in my heart as this storm nears the coast. As always, we never know how these things will go, which is another great chance to be prepared but also centered and open to whatever will come. All my love.