I walk into a grocery store with three items on my list and walk out an hour later. And it is not because I bought way more than I planned but because I walked through the entire store five times looking for my three items. I can never remember where they house peanut butter, or why cheeses are located in two different sections. I know pita chips are in a strange place, but where…? So an hour later, four items purchased (I had to add chocolate after the stress of searching for peanut butter for 20 minutes, the internal debate over whether or not I should ask for help, the questioning of how my life was being spent), I make it out to the parking lot and try to remember where I parked my car.

Meanwhile… slow moving turtles and salamanders will make their way over mountain ridges and through dangerous obstacles to return home if they are displaced. The red-spotted newt will travel miles to make its way back to its home pond by orienting itself using smells and an inner magnetic compass. Birds and butterflies can travel thousands of miles over new territory to make their way home or to a wintering site. The science behind such feats is not fully understood, but species have this “homing instinct” in which they use Earth’s magnetic field, smells, topography, or their relative position to the sun or night sky to navigate home or to a migration location.

We humans also have an innate “homing” instinct, and I came upon this opinion the hard way. Several years ago I felt as if my soul was dying and screaming for help and I helplessly stood by watching it happen, not even fully aware of the implications. I was deadening my very being just to function. I tried to fill my yearning with a relationship and gaining ground in my career, but then they were not enough. Nothing could fill the longing, and I lost track of even what I was longing for. I began looking for something more, but I didn’t even know what. I had lost myself and didn’t know what to do.

It took many aspects of my life falling apart to make a change. It has taken several years and many therapy sessions to even begin to reset. The losses have been numerous, but without losing many aspects of what and who I thought I was, I would not have realized that I was not those things. I was not my job, my relationship, my health, or my location. It is quite freeing to realize these things, although quite painful. It sounds very cliché, but it really took losing major aspects of myself to begin to find out who I truly am. I do not mean to imply that it was easy or that I have reached any sort end point.

The longing, I believe in large part, was a yearning for a return to who I truly am, my true self, who I am deep down. I had moved so far away in search of what I thought I wanted, that I left behind who I was. Yet, without leaving and searching, I do not know if I would have realized who I was or where “home” is. If we do not venture beyond our comfort zones, we won’t know where those boundaries of our comfort zone are, and if we don’t leave our “home” location, we won’t have the experience of learning how to find our way to it. Maybe this process is a homing instinct for us – the yearning for finding our true selves.

Birds, butterflies, and salamanders make it look so easy, but as usual, humans seem to blunder along a bit more before figuring it out. Our culture and egos cloud our view. We often do not stop long enough to even realize we are searching for something we deeply long for, and if we do, we do not know where to begin looking. We desire something of meaning, but go down many unfulfilling roads. Society gives us an endless number of wrong signals and supposed answers. One of the difficulties is, however, that we must find our own way back to our true self. We can do this by searching for what authentically speaks to our souls or essence, and this often involves learning how to even do that. After years of all sorts of voices yelling for your attention, the whisper of your own inner voice is hard to hear. Some find it again in meditation or contemplative prayer, some in nature, some in exercise, or some combination of practices, there are multiple ways to begin listening. While it may feel impossible at first, like butterflies and salamanders, I believe we have it in us to find our way home.

(Image: a red-eft [juvenile eastern newt] in West Virginia)