There are times when we find ourselves between adventures; between farewells and greetings; between landings and take-offs. For better or for worse, we have somehow designated the in-between time as “just in case”. Just in case we need time to grab more supplies. Just in case we need more lee-way between trips. Just in case we have doubts and fears to overcome. Many of us spend this time thinking forward to our next journey, packing and repacking in an infinite cycle, and making hypothetical plans in our heads. While we give the illusion of rest, in fact we are in a flurry to of preparation in order to try and make the best of the next leg of the journey. However, there is a “just in case” scenario that many of us fail to remember. We take in-between time just in case we have forgotten our homes.

Home has changing meanings among us, and it’s possible to have one home or many homes, whether they have concrete foundations or are built out of flesh-and-blood people. The significance behind these places can be lost when we continue to travel endlessly away from them. This is not to say that homes are necessarily good or bad, in fact, usually they are a mixture of both, but there is a reason why so many songwriters and artists choose to focus their work around the concept of “home”. They provide us with a chain reaction of memories, nostalgia, grounding, confidence, and motivation. Most importantly, though, they give us a way to measure how far we’ve come. If we find ourselves hundreds of miles away from the familiar, with our sense of home lost, it often means that we, too, are lost, even if we can point to exactly where we are on a map.

Our homes have watched us grow and blossom into the adults we are today, and they have positioned us at the start line of life, placing they’re hand on our back, to either comfort us or to push. In this way, our homes do a good job of reminding us of why we travel away from them. Sometimes we leave because we are lovingly encouraged to, and sometimes it is because we feel that is what we must do in order to escape. Too much time away can make us forget our motivation behind leaving, and therefore cause us to lose our drive that keeps us going. Many people claim that we find ourselves while on our adventures, but I am a solid believer that we really find ourselves when we return from them.

So the next time you find yourself in your home, trying to pass the “just in case”, in-between time, daydreaming about your upcoming journey, stop yourself and remember where you are. Take a long walk in your neighborhood, spend the afternoon with your mom, dad, siblings, or relatives, call up the friend you haven’t seen in over a year, cook yourself your favorite, feel-good meal— just in case. Use this the time to absorb the presence of your home, and rediscover all the familiar quirks that refuse to die, but are rather misplaced throughout the years. After all, It’s easy to forget where you’re going if you forget where you’ve come from.