This woeful start to summer. The ten meetings already booked for next week. The unsexiness of buying groceries and planning weekly meals.
Man, how I missed it.
I have long known that home is an emotional concept, not a spatial one. The people, my loved ones, carry a huge part of that responsibility, but with years passing, companionship alone doesn’t quite meet the criteria. Let me feel the dullness of my mundane life coursing through me, and then, I will feel finally settled.
Seeing Arya, Bruno, Peggy, Bella and Luna and them seemingly deciding that our absence was personally offensive.
Walking into nuja and sharing the biggest hugs (and snacks haul).
Knowing exactly where you’ll take your coffee, who you are playing padel with on Sunday, how you’ll be tucked in bed with your Kindle at 2130.
Catching up with friends; filling up that coffee and mental cup of yours.
And booking that hammam or massage at your favourite spa when the body needs rebooting.
Because home for me isn’t just the life I have built with my people; it’s the architecture of ordinary days.
And I used to think that needing this routine, this rigidity, was a personality flaw. How unadventurous of you, Manuja. But now, I know it helps me travel well, adapt well, and genuinely enjoy my time away. Simply because I have something I love to come back to.
Quite sad the hammam didn’t start with that gong.
So no big lessons this week; just the quiet contentment of knowing that coming back home after a few weeks away isn’t really about the place. It’s re-entering a life with the people and purpose that is just mine, that fits.
And that, I’ve decided, is the whole point of building one worth coming back to. Always.
M.
M’s Currents
A small thing I loved this week: no structure or theme, just sharing some favourites.
Auditory: Music is my oxygen. I have no favourites (songs, genres, artists); just a song always apt for any situation, ready in my brainy jukebox. So, watching Old Music Friday with Owen, is a dopamine shot I look forward to each week. He is brilliant, and so are all the tunes he picks. Old soul all the way!
xx
Manuja
Not for everyone. Never was.
