This Nomadic Life...By Brennan Lagman

Its 4:30am in Accra. I lay in bed, unable to sleep. The Malaria medication I’m on has filled my head with vivid dreams for the past few nights. Voices and faces of friends from my past 'lives' escape me. People who were once my world and who are now but a part of times and places I was but no longer am a part of, or so it seems. As I dig my face into my pillow, begging for its spongy softness to carry me off back to that distant land of slumber, thoughts of my colourful past come rushing back to me. The past few days, I have been sicker than a dog. The words “Home-Sick” have tantalizingly dripped off the edge of my tongue, yet never fully realized themselves in the air of a room. I begin to question: Where is home? 

            When I returned from the hospital, I felt so at home in my dorm room; the familiarity of this place where I lay my head to rest. It’s a familiar feeling. One I have felt many times, in many places before.  People here talk and talk about wanting to go home, but this feeling of home escapes me. There are things, components of a place that I live that I miss. Food. Freeways. Family. Friends. Faces. Dry air. Hills. California. But home? My ‘home’ in California is but a few of boxes in a friend’s house. I begin to look back on my life and think how home has always been this inescapable, ever changing concept that I have yet to realize. The realization then creeps in to my mind that the only home to me, or the home I have come to know, is the place I rest my head. I am simply a Nomad.

            Is this nomadic life I live peculiar to me? Is my experience special, or am I entertaining a personal fable to make me feel …different? Memories of my many ‘lives’ come rushing to me, in a whirlwind of colors, experiences, people, and places.  Sixteen Schools--Eight Elementary, two Junior Highs, two high schools, four Universities. Two States, and now two, soon to be three countries. People, oh gosh, so many people. Friends from distant places, people I had once plastered to the walls of my inner world as so important, trying so hard to change my skin so I could belong to them, who are now nothing more than memories, or pages on my Facebook, literally thousands of them. Their importance, the feeling of their necessary presence in my conception of home and identity no longer there but replaced with the people of present. I am a nomad.

            Is this Nomadic lifestyle my gift? In many ways it is. I welcome change like the sweet morning song of a bird. Like the orange and purple splendor of a new day promised on the edge of dawn. It keeps me going here--in a new place, a new country, nothing to hold me back. Change has become my home, as much as this pillow, this room I have decorated with art, this place where I eat, meditate and shower.

            This is the life I live--change. I love it, I do. Change and my experiences have shaped me into the man that I am today. But when change is my home, like its very essence my inner world is…changing. Most days I am ready to leap off into a brand new adventure, to dive in head first, let my toes touch the shores of a new place, let new people become the sails to my current ship and for a few fleeting moments call them family.

            At other times I wish I could just dig my heels in the earth, erect a tent, or maybe build a house I can call home. Fill it with some beautiful art. Let the rooms resound with the sound of music, oldies, but goodies. Maybe some Gypsy Kings in the mornings, while cooking an amazing breakfast for a family I might one day have. Let my nose revel in the delightful smell of freshly chopped veggies, bacon sizzling on the stove, wafting in the scent of a fresh brew of coffee. I want to open my back door and yell,”Gromit!” and see my chocolate lab come running in, showing her canines in a silly Labrador smile, ready to shower me in her sloppy canine kisses. I miss her so much. 

            Homesick. Home-Sick. Sick for home. I guess one could describe this experience I am having as just that. But it is different for me. I miss people no doubt. I miss my dad. My brothers. My sisters. My good friends. My Mom. My Sahaja Yoga Family. My Grandparents. I miss California. I miss food. But Home? Hmm. Home is this place and concept I feel I have yet to realize. I am a nomad. This is my life.

- Brennan Lagman

This is a repost from Brennan Lagman's blog. To view his blog click here