Skip to main content

Greetings world,

We have returned home from our summer in Bangalore, India. Or have we? This morning I performed a simple act that made me question that assumption.

I turned the calendar from June, our month of departure, to August. What happened in that two months here? Suddenly I was in a movie, watching my life and feeling detached from my own home. A couple of days ago we went to one of our favorite breakfast places, J. Christopher’s in the Roswell town square. But when the server brought us the menu the name of the place had changed to The Public House. They were still owned by J. Christopher’s and the manager was the same, but the food and the name had changed.

We weren’t gone long, but long enough for at least some familiar things to become unfamiliar.

When we drive the wide Atlanta roads, my husband and I feel strange now. We find ourselves secretly wondering where all the goats, auto-rickshaws, and crowds are. We sleep in the daytime and do chores at night. Our world is a little bit upside down.

I am thrilled to be home. I love eating my favorite foods again, seeing my beloved friends and family, and fitting in. Yet every night I dream of our apartment in Bangalore, wondering how the old man by the fruit stand is doing and harboring a touch of envy for the people still living there who can go visit my favorite goats.

The idea of home reminds me of a colorful fruit basket, with many meanings and emotions. Once you’ve gone through the sweat and tears of adjusting to a new culture and developing routines there, you cannot expect to jump right back to your homeland culture, no matter how familiar it might have been.

Settling back in has been a mixed basket as well. My car didn’t start when we went to pick it up and I felt vulnerable, just like I did in India when I realized we didn’t have a decent cooking knife (https://www.highroaders.com/blog/staying-put-and-discovering-vulnerability/). Sadly, without my car in Atlanta it’s hard to get around. Our fridge was empty and anxiety crept in.

With some heroic work on my husband’s part, the car was revived, the army of ants were extracted from our cupboards, and our mail was retrieved. We are starting to feel at home. Or are we?

I wanted some clear sign that we have settled back in, a marker that says, “Now your life is in order. Now you can go back to work and give your best to your clients. Now you can stop missing India and start feeling normal.”

As you can imagine no such thing exists. What does exist is the experience of homecoming, however it is. Just when my energy and enthusiasm for our return was flagging a little, I received this quote by e-mail from Buddhist nun and teacher Cheri Huber.

“When we drop the idea that we’re supposed to be having a certain kind of experience and open ourselves to the experience we are having, then we avoid nothing, and we fear nothing, because we are right here with ourselves.”

So I will be awake in the night, I will dream of India, and I will relish every moment of being home. And most of all I will be thankful.

 

Vicki Flier Hudson

Vicki Flier Hudson, Chief Collaboration Officer for Highroad Global Services, Inc. inspires people to leverage the full power of differences. She has helped countless large-sized corporations establish successful operations across the globe and build bridges across cultures, distance, and time.

4 Comments

  • Linda Baisch says:

    Welcome home, Vic and Jay!
    I love the quote from Cheri Huber. Thanks for sharing this
    along with your own inspired insight.
    Looking forward to seeing you next month!

  • Thanks, Linda! Isn’t Cheri Huber inspiring? Her books are filled with that kind of wisdom. Thanks for reading and I can’t wait to see you all!

  • Donna Flier says:

    Your descriptions of all the “coming home” adjustments, the flurry of activity and emotions are wonderful to read and learn from. I will post the quote from Cheri Huber in a prominent place so I may be reminded to open myself to the experiences I am having and also I will look for her books. Thank you so much for this beautifully written article.

  • Danese Simpkins says:

    Awesome! Thanks for sharing Vicki!

Leave a Reply