Familiar Footing is kind of Flat

Coming back from a vacation puts me in a strange state of mind - I'm happy to be back home, to my familiar room, familiar things, to have a nice long shower and a long night's sleep, but it's the next morning now, and I don't want to do the mundane everyday things. I'm questioning everything I normally do without thinking. My steps are slow, my voice is mute, my face unsmiling. Heavy as I feel, I don't think this is a bad thing - I think it's good that I'm able to put pauses into the familiar, question my normality, wonder about the why's, the reason for this routine. Two weeks of living on whim, going with the day's flow, putting down my daily burden was a good way to get away, to get a feel for becoming root-less, feeling more like a bird in flight. (Is this how monks and hermits feel?)

But after two weeks, I'm ready to put down my roots again, give rest to my wings. The only problem is I don't want to come back to the same roots that I had uprooted 2 weeks ago. Settling into these overgrown heavy roots is unsettling, the way a burden feels heavier when I put it back on my back after putting it down for a while. But what about the old, well-tended roots? Do I let them die!? That makes me feel like a monster.

And so the story goes, the old familiar struggle continues - worried about looking like a monster versus wanting to do what's right for me, what I want to do versus what I need to do, what my soul needs versus what my conscience says. I'm constantly wondering about the voices I hear, not sure if I'm hearing them right, not sure who they're coming from, and unsure what to do about them. But I guess this is the command for all human existence - to find the true voice within and follow it unquestioningly. Can I recognize it? Will I have the strength and courage to follow it?

And then I saw this in a Martha Beck book -
"Begin making choices based on what makes you feel freer and happier, rather than how you think an ideal life should look. It's the process of feeling our way toward happiness, not the realizing of some Platonic ideal, that creates our best lives."

Simple as this sounds, it is quite profound. Rather than obsessing about some unreachable ideal, focusing on the here and now, and following what feels right, free and happy at this moment is the simple answer to my confusion.