You Cannot Return to the Same Home Twice

An old doorway opened this morning.

What I used to call Aladdin’s closet—a small, sloping space from childhood, built by my father, where imagination had room to stretch into something magical. I hadn’t stepped into it in a while, but today it was there again—not as a place in the house, but as a place in the mind.

As soon as I entered, something was different.

There was a mirror.

And in it, instead of a single door, there were two.

An entrance—and an exit.

That’s when the question arose:

Running… and returning.

Returning from where?

Running to where?

“Home” came to mind.

But what is home?

If I leave and come back, that seems simple enough. But even that begins to shift—because nothing is exactly the same. The place has moved, time has passed, the moment is different.

You can’t return to the same home twice.

So then—where is home?

Is it the place we arrive at?

Or the moment we recognize something as complete?

It began to feel like finishing a puzzle.

Searching through hundreds of pieces—edges first, corners, fragments slowly forming an image. Working, adjusting, wondering if something is missing.

And then—finally—the last piece.

It fits.

For a moment, everything resolves.

There’s a quiet sense of completion.

Home.

But only for a moment.

Because even that passes.

And then the movement begins again.

But this time, instead of running outward, the direction turns inward.

Like a journey through the body—moving through arms, into the fingers, back through the torso, down the legs, circling through the head.

Movement everywhere.

Exploration without leaving.

And then, returning again.

Not to a place, but to a kind of stillness.

A settling.

Somewhere in that rhythm, patience appears.

At first, it feels like waiting—holding something together.

But if you stay with it, it changes.

Like an egg.

At the surface, there is a shell—structure, containment. But when it softens, when it opens, something else is revealed underneath.

Not tension.

Not waiting.

But softness.

A gentle ease.

A quiet settling.

What yoga might call sukha purvaka—a kind of inner ease or happiness that isn’t forced, just uncovered.

And that seems to be the space between running and returning.

A moment that can be stretched—not by holding onto it, but by relaxing into it.

Letting it open.

And within that openness, there is light.

Not something added.

But something noticed.

A steady presence that was there before the running, during the running, and after the return.

Home is not where the movement ends.

It is what is quietly present through all of it.