Realization

 

    "I could never live like that", you used to say, sipping on Starbucks with your friends. The idea seemed repellent, and you went about your day, immersed in the world you thought most important, but enmeshed in drama from the moment you got home.

    As you got older, materials seemed less important. Moving place to place, it was harder to keep hold of possessions so simple; furniture, knick-knacks, and even decorations like fake houseplants. Your life had to fit into a U-Haul, and with each place left behind, you learned to take less. Once graduated, you saw the world open before you; the ability to get a full time job without school getting in the way, college courses that fit into your work schedule, a car that allowed you to travel at your leisure, and money in the bank that helped you become permanently established, effectively breaking the cycle of evictions that followed your family.

    After a while, you take a road trip to a beautifully forested area, something you couldn't have fathomed. Your therapist said it would help you unwind and let go of the burdens of the world. Now that you're a responsible adult, the drudgery of the day to day routine wears you down. Phone on silent, you walk the paths and listen to the flow of the streams, chirp of the birds, and rustle of leaves on the trees you can never name. The outside world of cinemas, conventions, carnivals, and expos, cannot hold a candle to the simple pleasures of life. You arrive back at your car nearing nightfall, then your home by 9pm. Showered and in bed, you reflect on your day with such perfect clarity, that in your dreams, you live it all again.

    How was it that you ever went without personal days? Allowed others to determine your day? Let the world's politics and beliefs, sway everything about you? Realization hits home faster than you intended, and though it seems like a spur of the moment decision, you review your finances. The next day, you take every penny of savings, and buy an empty bus. Within the year, the work is done, and you leave the material, for what is now your true home.