Setsunai is Mono no aware

Driving the main street that travels east and west through town, a canopied tunnel with people walking their dogs and riding their bikes and going for a run, I realize that nowhere else in the world is like this place. Many are made of the same elements. All, depending on how deep you look.

But there's nowhere else in the world where the sun could shine like this again. Where it could fall and highlight that name on that stone, or shower the sidewalk and the freshly cut lawns. The wind, blowing through the trees and dazzling the air with rhythmic cascades of glistening drops from the summer rain, an instant that could never hope to be replicated. Not in a photo. Not even in the next moment, because it is never the same for two sequential points in time.

And I'm leaving it all behind for a new place where the underlying beauty of the universe will manifest in a unique array.

Should I call it a new home? I guess home is where the heart is, and it may take some time for mine to get mailed to me. The USPS tends to be like that.

The place I was born is less and less like a home to me (which doesn't necessarily make it less important). The place I sleep isn't as much a home as it used to be. What is a home, then? It's more than just where your bed is, where your parents live.

It seems to be some ultimate sense of belonging. Yet that, too, is subject to transience. I do not belong here. I do not know where I belong, or if I'll ever find a place where I'll belong, but right now it is not here. And that is not because it isn't good enough for me. Perhaps that sense of belonging is best found within oneself, but that journey cannot be made by standing still.

Goodbye to many of my friends. We'll stay in touch, but not in handshakes, hugs, laughs beating on the drums of ears, or the same light reflecting one another infinitely in mirrored eye contact.

Each of my friends are like the town I've lived in for my whole life. There are many like them. Many share names. Are made of the same parts or characteristics. But there is no one quite like them. They are irreplaceable. Divine, in the eyes of the Lord.

This is the push against the dock. Don't come. Stand and wave. Run all the way to the end of the dock yelling for me. Jump and grab hold of the railing and climb aboard. But this boat is set sail for the horizon.

And it is possible that one day this boat will appear on that same horizon again. Growing not smaller, but greater.