On Home: Where we return

Sometimes two books arrive at exactly the right moment.

One teaches you how to see.

The other teaches you how to return.

I’ve been reading In Praise of Shadows and The Odyssey. On the surface they couldn’t be more different. One is a quiet meditation on beauty. The other, one of the oldest stories ever told.

Yet they seem to be asking the same question.

How should we inhabit a life?

Tanizaki reminds us that not everything beautiful needs to be brightly lit. Some things ask us to slow down, let our eyes adjust, and discover what has been there all along.

Homer tells the story of a man trying to find his way home.

But perhaps the greater journey isn’t across the sea.

Perhaps it is back to oneself.

Lately I’ve realised that much of what I was searching for wasn’t another destination. It was a centre. A place from which to live, to create and to return.

I used to think home was somewhere I would eventually arrive.

Now I think it is something we gradually recognise.

Perhaps every life is an odyssey.

Not because we travel far. But because we spend so long learning where home has been all along.

Tanizaki reminds us that not everything beautiful needs to be brightly lit.