So I'm in Texas. I come here every year to visit my family. I'm not from the Lone Star State myself, but have spent many weeks and months of my life here.
Texas has always been a sanctuary for me. My respite from jobs, schedules, and difficult relationships. The place where I felt loved unconditionally, cared for by a family who was uncritical and happy to see me. I slept blissfully, comforted by the musty scent of my father's house and the rhythmic symphony of crickets and cicadas. If my life fell apart for some reason, I always knew I could run to Texas.
But for the first time ever, I'm really, truly homesick here. If I wrote a country song right now, it would be about driving my old pickup truck right back to Colorado. I'd leave my dusty boots outside the practice room of the yoga studio, along with my big gold belt buckle with the "Om" symbol in the middle.
Don't get me wrong, I still love Texas. The rich, hot outdoors packed with wildlife, the giant succulents, the beautiful bigness of everything. The lakes you can lose yourself on in a boat and swim in without freezing to death. The friendliness of strangers, the Mexican food, the cowboys and the kind Southern ladies with their big hair and Diet Cokes. It's just different somehow.
As Thomas Wolfe says, you can't go home again. I miss the Texas I used to love, but it has changed and so have I. We are like old lovers who have grown apart but still care for one another, our hearts warm with bittersweet nostalgia. I have come to believe that my only real home is that ever-evolving thing we call yoga practice. That perhaps all our suffering is simply homesickness for a deeper connection to the Divine. And when we truly connect, when I am in that place in me and you are in that place in you, well, we are one. So Namaste for now, y'all. I'll see you there, whenever we both arrive.
