I recently had the challenge of finding a decent, affordable new place to live in San Francisco. After weeks of searching, I found a spot and have been settling in. Admittedly, it is a strange space, but what matters to me most is that it feels like home. After assembling Ikea furniture until my hands and fingers were sore and decorating with items picked up on my travels, it’s beginning to become one. One of my favorite Gandhi quotes came to mind for this week’s Wanderful Words:
“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
This relates to many aspects of what home means to me. Like I said, I fill my living space home with tidbits of my travels– artwork and knick knacks that remind me of both the ups and downs of the road and the lessons I’ve learned on it. Beyond my blood family, I like to surround myself with others from a variety of cultures and upbringings. In my previous post, I wrote about the ability to feel at home amongst different types of people and in less familiar places. And the post before that was about experiencing other cultures in my home base city.
But while I want to open my mind, my house, and my life to the ideas and influences of other cultures, I want the core of who I am to remain intact. And who I am is by nature the product of many cultures.
