The Push and Pull of Home: My Struggle to Build a Life of Connection
This week has been an interesting balance of travel and seeking security. I almost didn’t make a post because I haven’t had too much time to think. But here we go!
Where I Am Right Now
Katharina and I travelled 28 hours to make it to Switzerland. Her parents picked us up and drove us back to Liechtenstein where we spent 3 days. Today is Father’s day in Liechtenstein so we did a snow hike at the top of a skiing area. It’s difficult to comprehend the beauty of the Swiss mountains. I also have to admit it’s a pretty impressive contrast to American health standards that Katharina’s 70-year old parents did a 5 KM hike with elevation through the snow without it seeming to affect them at all. But either way we had fun and made a snow woman along the way.
My Current State of Mind
At this exact moment, I’m feeling relief and anxiety at the same time. We just booked flights to the US to spend nearly 5 months there. One part of me that has been searching for stability for the past 3 months feels like the weight is finally off my shoulders. We’ve decided. Another part of me that’s been enjoying the freedom of choosing where to go moment to moment is feeling trapped.
These two parts of myself (and Katharina) have been at war for the past several months. We’ve actually considered over a dozen locations to go for hours on end. We’ve looked at flights and sat with indecision many times. We’ve wondered where would be “best” for us and had to ask a lot of questions of what we want for ourselves. Which has been exhausting.
… But it’s also been important. Important because normally decisions aren’t that hard because all parts of me are aligned. But this decision had many parts of both the present and future me in conflict. The parts of me that want to live cheaply versus the one tempted by locations with high-achievers. The desire for community combatting the desire to be free. The appeal of the nomad lifestyle contrasting with a desire to be closer to the earth and nature. The desire to discover combatting with the desire to have roots.
All of these pieces of me have been the reason this decision was so hard. It wasn’t just a decision to spend 5 months in one place - even if that’s the longest we’ve spent in 3+ years. It was a decision to invest in family, community, nature and stability. It was a conscious commitment to slowing down, accepting trade-offs and imagining where we’d like to have roots. It is a moment to sit and ask ourselves “what we want” and accept what we’ll have to do to get it.
Which is why I’m happy to have a 5 month trial run in Upstate NY… even if I did have to remind myself multiple times we could leave mid summer on a trip if we wanted to to convince myself to click purchase on the flights.
What’s Changing in My Thinking: If You Want To Go Fast Go Alone…
… But if you want to go far, go together. This has been a mantra for me over the last several weeks. It’s been a reminder that any true movement towards a healthier world will happen as part of a bigger group of people.
Which I have to own has been difficult for me to accept. I still have a strong egoic tendency to want to be the person who does it all. To figure out an answer and make something happen. To be the person who solves the problem.
That worked really well for me up until this point in my life. I aced a lot of the individualistic life goals of a capitalistic system. While I worked in partnership with Alex to make Empodio happen, most of the things I did were led by me. When I wanted to get something done, I was a force of nature. But I was usually a solitary one.
But that doesn’t work for the things I want to do now. I’m interested in changes that affect the entire world and steer us in a better direction. In movements that change the way we structure our society. In changing systems that keep us from a healthier world.
These are not things I can change on my own. They’re not even things I can make a direct and measurable impact on with my actions. They’re be definition bigger than me and bigger than anything I can imagine.
Which again… is really hard for me. It means that anything I do has to simply be dedicated to making society better without seeing what I want “change.” It means that I have to collaborate with as many people as possible feeling comfort in being part of something bigger than myself. It means that I’m not special and certainly not essential to what’s being done.
Which is part of the biggest change in my thinking - rejecting the Hero’s Journey. In the West we glorify the idea of individualism which is summed up in Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. The idea of a single important chosen person developing the skills to change the world. They have a group of people who support them, but in the end the Hero meets their destiny.
This story has been force-fed to us in every aspect of Western life. It’s self-actualization, it’s every superhero movie, it’s the startup founder “changing the world” from his garage, it’s the lone genius artist suffering for their craft, it’s the CEO grinding 80-hour weeks so they can one day be the visionary leader who finally gets the cover of Forbes. It’s every college admissions essay about "overcoming adversity" and "finding yourself." It’s the politician’s rise from humble beginnings, the sports prodigy defying the odds, the self-made millionaire telling you that if you just worked harder, you too could be a hero.
Even the wellness industry sells the journey—become the best version of yourself, slay your inner demons, and ascend to enlightenment as a one-person success story. It’s the American Dream in narrative form, where everything is a battle, and the battle is always personal. No wonder we burn out. No wonder we feel alone. No wonder we keep waiting for the moment we finally "win"—as if life were something you could conquer instead of something you live in relationship with.
But my last 3 years of forays into Eastern & Indigenous wisdom has taught me that there’s a better way. Instead of obsessing about your own “Hero’s Journey”, you can embrace being part of a deeply interconnected world. We could call it The Way Of the Many. One where your goal is to recognize your connection to everything and learn how to be in balance and harmony with life. Where you recognize the cyclical nature of the world and participate in it’s continual evolution as part of a never-ending story.
It’s beautiful, and also deeply counter to everything we stand for in the west. It asks of you to subsume your individualized identity to be part of a greater whole. To honor yourself but to “be” in relation to everything around you. To dedicate yourself to the benefit of all beings - which includes a lot more than we accept in the west. It takes the ego and puts it back in it’s right place, rather than encouraging it to grow out of control.
It’s also what I’ve been working on doing - and still regularly failing. Even if I want to work on things to support the entire world, I find myself wanting to lead where I should follow. Even if I want to be part of a movement, I still struggle with not being special. Even if I want to be a member of a community, I still want to have my “freedom”. These are pieces of myself I’m slowly letting go. It’s a journey. But I’m confident a better world is on the other side.
My Plans for the Week
Honestly… I’m not sure. I’m taking it as it goes. I’m fresh off the burst of having decided Dansville and feeling like we’ll be stable for a while. But I’m also sitting with the nervousness of the question of “what will we do with that stability”. All the questions that are secondary when you’re not sure where you’ll be next week start popping up. So my real plans are to sit with it, eat some good cheese, and see some mountains. Love you all, till next time.
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