Wherever I Go, Here I Am

Back at the Temple after a four-week trip to Europe. What a life! Just to say ‘four-week trip to Europe’ sounds so glamorous. It was a wonderful trip, but not in the way it sounds to me when I say ‘four-week trip to Europe.’

The sights and people were fascinating and I was aware of not being where I usually am, but our trip was fundamentally just another version of ordinary life. Everywhere we went, I found myself looking out of my own eyes, thinking my own thoughts and living my own life.

I find this ubiquitousness of my self deeply puzzling and slightly disappointing. Of course, mostly I don’t think about it, but when I look closely, I often notice a familiar vague longing to be somewhere else, even when I am somewhere else.

            While in Belgium leading a retreat, a friend loaned me her bicycle and I rode every day through the rolling landscape and old towns southeast of Brussels. Fields of wheat, potatoes and spinach alternating with cobble stoned villages and large white cows that nodded approvingly when I practiced my French (Bonjour!) on them. Bright red poppies appearing by the roadside and church spires in the distance completed the bucolic setting as if they had been planted by the local chamber of commerce.

On my first outing, I saw a lovely line of trees on the horizon – evenly spaced little green lollipop trees in the distance that could have been drawn by a six-year-old. Their orderly and serene line up reminded me of impressionist paintings of the French countryside. The scenic rhythm of the intentional trees amidst the lush green fields looked so inviting.

So having no destination except where I was coming from, I headed off for that tree-lined boulevard in the distance across the green fields. But when I got there, it wasn’t there anymore. I mean, it was there but it wasn’t what I thought it was. The visual rhythm, so alluring from a distance, was nowhere to be found. All that was there was a road with a few trees on either side.

            We went to Portugal and had lunch at an amazing restaurant right on the beach, toured the medieval city of Porto, listened to Fado in a cellar while sipping port wine and bought our ticket and got into the bookstore where JK Rowling worked while she was in Porto writing parts of the Harry Potter epic.

After the retreat we led in Belgium, we traveled to the picturesque city of Bruges – complete with canals, Belgium waffles, chocolate stores on every corner, cobbled streets, a thousand varieties of amazing beer, and a vial of dried blood that was brought back from the Crusades and is revered as Christ’s blood. Real or not the place was thronged with tourists among which we happily took our place.

It was all wonderful and beautiful AND surprisingly ordinary in the being there.

Traveling is tricky business. One never knows what one is getting into. But the tired afternoon faces of the wandering couples and tour groups tramping onto the next point of interest belie the glamour of it all. No one looks very happy. But, knowing their job and commitment to the future, every one seems willing to put on their happy face as they pose for themselves or others in front of the camera.

This traveling ritual of creating false memories of happiness seems quite depressing. I don’t mean to knock travel – I feel so lucky to be able to see other parts of the world. I love seeing new landscapes – the way a river curves and the patterns of cultivation and contained wildness. I like meeting people who see the world in ways I can barely imagine. (Of course, I could invite my neighbor over for a beer if I actually really wanted this.)

Bottom line, I’m happy to be home and sitting out on the Temple porch this morning. In the peacefulness of the birds sounds and cars passing by, I wonder why I am so often in such a hurry to tear off on the next adventure. The June mountain laurel is in full bloom – clusters of pink popcorn that have magically appeared amidst the lush green that is everywhere. The sweet old fashioned violas wave their purple and orange faces, trembling happily on their fragile stems.

The sunlight streams sideways from the occluded horizon into the hearts of the trees in the Temple gardens – these warm and inviting trees that I see and appreciate anew having been where they are not. This too is the gift of travel – to see the unique shape of the place you already are.

Sitting here this morning, I can see that at some point I will have exhausted my run—like the frisky puppy that runs and runs with utter delight only to collapse, exhausted and satisfied on the living room rug. Perhaps I too will learn to be content to stare out into whatever space I find myself – sights and sounds continually presenting their wondrous demonstration of this particular place.