Do You Live in a Crash Pad or a Launch Pad?
I've been on the road all my life.
My first passport was issued to me when I was two. I flew internationally for the first time at three. I flew for the first time in the States as a baby when I was a few days old. My first memory, I was a toddler. My step-father was carrying me to the car, telling me we were moving. It was the middle of the night. I have been in transit for as long as I can remember.
So, the feeling took my by surprise, landing in San Francisco after spending more than a dozen hours in transit. The feeling? It felt good to be heading home. But not in the normal can't-wait-to-park-this-luggage way. This time, I felt at ease about returning home. As someone who has been on the road for most of her life, this is an important distinction to make.
Bought a home this year. Someone asked what I like about it. In response, I rattled off a list. "Oh, it's like a hotel, it's got all the amenities, I know where everything is so I can grab it when running out the door. It's the perfect crash pad." Amenities? Crash pad? This sounds like a glorified hotel, not a home.
And that's how I've treated it. As a place to land, a place to crash. A place to sleep for a few days before catching the next plane.
A shift happened for me when I saw a familiar restaurant in Motomachi during this most recent trip to Japan. The restaurant's called "Launch Pad." For whatever reason, in that moment I noticed a shift in my thinking.
I don't want to see my home as a place to "crash" anymore, I thought. I want to start seeing it as a place from which to launch.
Why the shift? It could be that Japan has slower rhythms than much of the world I've seen. The entire cycle of life is honored. You see all ages represented in media, in advertisements on trains. There's no place to "go" and no emphasis on your mid-20s being the best time of your life that we see in American advertising. There's something deeply settling about the Japanese way of life. Even in the cities, even during periods of real rush, there's a stillness in Japan I find difficult to articulate.
Why fly? I see value in travel, in working with international companies, in being pushed and moved and jostled. In adventuring, photographing, learning new languages. It is the elixir of youth. It prepares you for life, over and over again. In the itinerary changes, the exhausted decision-making moments. In the restlessness of jet lag, the O-ring changes.
I have loved my life on wheels. It is so deeply embedded in me to be on the move, living out of a suitcase. And that life has served me long enough. The crash that inevitably accompanies the terminating flight. I'm going to build my life to have less of that.
For now, at least, it's time to slow down, and focus on the launch.
Do you live in a crash pad or a launch pad? How do you see home?
Monday, November 9, 2009
Reader Comments (14)
Great read!Food for thought! Happy focusing on the launch!
I guess I don't use the same 2 terms to articulate how I feel about home, but I definitely see parallels. The difference (for me! Not making implications about you!) was how comfortable I was in my own home. When I lived in the midwest and northeast, it was a crash pad, because I was never fully at ease there. I was never fully at ease anywhere, though.
In Miami, home became both.
Now, in Colorado, it is a place I love to be, but also a place I love to leave for the purpose of exploration, expansion, and just plain fun. But it's always a wonderful place to return.
That feeling is still noticeable and wonderful.
Gawd damn, you are cute!
My daughter's first passport was taken when she was four months old and looking like Yokozuna Asashoryu. Your photo is much better! :-)
We're a family that's constantly travelling and yes, it always feels good to be back home, no matter how posh a hotel in our destination can be or how exciting the vacation is.
I have been living in crash pad mode since January 2001. That is when I first moved across the country. I knew the move wasn't permanent. After giving away everything I owned for the first move, I never bought anything nice or worth keeping once I got in my new place. I have since moved back and forth across the country 3 more times. And I've given everything I owned away each time. Maybe one day I'll get over it, but for now, I don't see a big reason to buy anything I really like, because I may just be giving it all away....
Great post! I completely understand this. Although, I haven't been quite the traveler as you, I've lived several places and for the most part, none of them have felt like home. My house feels like home, but my town doesn't. Boulder is the first place I've ever visited that has felt like home, which is why I'm trying to move there. It's just this sense of peace that comes over me.
I think when I finally settled into life in Japan, I finally felt at home, calm, and serene. I lived in the country where everything was very slow but so enriching. I finally get (and I've been told so many times) why they have such an emphasis on "we have 4 distinct seasons" This doesn't just mean weather, climate...it goes with all aspects of life.
I miss the respect for the seasons of a slow life. The seasonal foods, traditions but mostly the feeling of being home, not just longing for it. With that is the feeling that you can travel anywhere in the world and you have a home to go to.
Your home isn't the road, train or plane. It's where you lay your roots down, it's a sanctuary, it's your rock and all those other cliches. But it also doesn't mean you're anchored there. It's a place to dream up new things to do, go, and see. It really IS your launchpad.
Enjoy your Launchpad! Thanks for the thoughts today.
what truly classic passport photo!
I was on the road (or on the wing) for a decade, I travelled to work and to be stretched, to face my fears and my own assumptions, to make friends who had different religions, languages and cuisines.
At the end of last year I had just popped over to Sydney for a yoga teacher training and one morning our wonderful teacher asked each of us to really connect in with what we were feeling in our bodies before be began. To my great surprise I was feeling homesick - a strange longing to be back in my little cottage by the sea. I realised that I had finally found a home, it was time to be still for a while.
Last year I'd had bursitis in my right hip and this year it had shifted into my sacrum. A Chinese energy worker told me this was associated with my spleen meridian and was a sign of too much movement, change and travel. Interestingly, as I sit still in my little cottage by the sea and I dig my own garden and plant vegetables, my hip and back issues are gently shifting.
I am sure you will find the right balance in your launch pad.
Marianne Fascinating comment. This post is in part about how I got started practicing yoga. Believe it or not, it was bursitis in my hips when I was in my teens that first led me to the practice.
I am the opposite. I have always defined myself as one who does NOT like to travel.
My father loved to travel, but I did not inherit his passion.
Ironically, my 4 yr old and 2 yr old have been on more plane rides than I'd like to count -- including 2 trips to Italy. (Well Sophia was in my womb for one of those.)
I only travel when necessary. Clearly, blogging trips and conferences have enough pull to get me to pack a suitcase. And Italy has my inlaws, so there's no choice about that trip.
Otherwise, home is where I want to be.
I've never thought of my little apartment in these terms before but after having read your post, I would have to say that I have a crash pad. I share a 2 bedroom apartment with someone and it never truly feels like home. Home for me is still my parents place - 2 acres of country property, a pond, chickens and ducks. That is a place that feels right. One day I hope I will have my own home, my own launchpad rather than a place to lay my head and cook my morning oatmeal, but for now it serves it's purpose.
Look at how cute liddo Gwen is!
I know what you mean about feeling like your living space is just another destination in your travels. That's how I felt about my first apartment and now that Glenn and I live in our new one I consider it more *home*. I can only imagine what it will feel like when we buy a whole HOUSE.
ps; Glad I am able to view your site now :) I don't know what the heck was going on with it last night!
xo
For years I told friends I wanted a home so I could leave it--that roots were important only so you could have wings, something to push off from. A launch pad, if you will. And I did push off. Traveled, lived overseas (including five years in Japan). Worked as a travel writer. It was profoundly part of who I am (crossed my first int'l border at 5 wks old; like you, I got it in the genes).
These days, however, it's all about home. I'm not sure if it's part of shifting into my later thirties, or being really pushed by some new work/creative projects (and exhausted), but all I want to do is be home and putter in the garden. I crave it in a way I never expected. I turned down exciting travel opportunities this fall because I didn't want to be away.
It's funny how things change--I never would have predicted. Of course, I split my time between two cities now, so home is a relative term. Even that is feeling like too much these days--though I dearly love my two cities and don't want to have to choose. More and more, I just want to be home.
But I love the idea of a launch pad--a place from which to launch all sorts of things, not only yourself. Thanks!