Trips back home
From a little place in the fjords of Iceland called Fáskrúðsfjörður. Not necessarily “home” but it certainly felt like it when I took a tour around Iceland with friends in 2018.
Summer is in full swing. In fact, a better part of June is now memory and, like most summers that have gone before while working with our boys from home, it’s hard to believe time drifts forward rapidly.
Mind drift
Maybe it’s having the boys in tow for the summer or this season of life I’m in. I’ve found myself, in moments between things, when my mind finds a place to rest, drifting to memories of my own childhood. Does that ever happen to you? Current environments, sounds, smells, even video games trigger memories and send you on a visit to another time? Through personal experience and just as often through discussions with my clients I find many around this season of life (or thereafter) have a growing awareness of their formative years. I imagine, although I’ve not taken the time to research this, that it’s a common occurrence for your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s & beyond to be filled with connecting dots to make sense of who you are, how you got here and what you want to do with your numbered days in existence. Not to get so serious so fast, but I’m not afraid of a little emotional intensity.
As I’ve done some of this exploring and prodding in my own life the last few years I’ve seen a pattern of choices and gravitational pulls back to some formative and “safe” times throughout formative times of my life. Although it’s not necessarily a rule and I hate the precedent the word “normal” evokes, I think many of us attempt to recreate adapted and even improved environments from our formative years when we’re older.
And it kinda make sense, to me, at least. A sense of self starts to emerge at some point during our young development and I’ve begun to wonder if the environment in which we felt safe to explore those things gets etched into our brains. So, in the more advanced stages of life, when we feel permission to re-explore, many (not all) of us have a place & time when we felt free and safe and the autonomy to explore. We bring that with us when we set about creating the life we want for ourselves now. To create. To understand. To fuel curiosity. To be.
For the purposes of becoming more self-aware and continuing the work of creating a home & environment centered around life’s most important things I think we can learn a thing or two by being attentive to what we see, hear and notice when we revisit those memories. Maybe it could prove helpful as we’re trying to create a sense of home in the places we spend the most time? It’s worth a try! Shall we?
An experiment
Can we try an experiment? It won’t take long and you can take your device with you during this, but we’ll go on a little field trip. If you’re at home while you’re reading this go to a room of your home that feels most like home. If you’re out & about, you can just as easily close your eyes and visit in your mind.
So you find yourself in the room that feels most like home. The room you love the most, for whatever reason that is. Take a look around. We’re not going to focus on aesthetic but more on connection.
Time for a bit of interrogation:
PLACE: What is this place? What do you love about it? What’s your relation to it? Why is it meaningful?
AFFINITY: What stops you as you look around? Is there something in the room that you have a particular affinity for? Artifacts that touch a certain place, person or time? Something of meaning or value (regardless of the cost)? Find it yet? If not, that’s okay, you can keep reading - no one is watching - so you have permission to proceed (or not) however you like.
NATURE: While you’re exploring just take notice of anything about this that you just really enjoy. Is it a thing or is the certain quality of a thing (like texture, color, form, taste or sound) that captivates your attention?
MEMORY: Does this remind you of anything? If so, what/when/where or who does it remind you of? How were you first introduced to this? Do you remember? If so, explore that a bit, if not, just keep reading, sometimes someone else giving an example of theirs can help you.
My turn
Now, I’ll tell you mine.
PLACE: I’m sitting in our kitchen at our island. It’s a disaster right now - so I’m doing my best not to focus on the chaos - but, it’s my favorite part of our home. Mostly because it’s finished and we spend so much time here.
AFFINITY: I love a lot of things, but I look around and what catches my attention are our cabinets (the color in particular) and our backsplash behind our counter on the same wall as the range. I just love them.
NATURE: The backsplash is matte white with an undulated, irregular surface. It kind of reminds me of water (although it’s not blue) or plaster from an old building. The cabinets are just a beautiful color. They’re like a pale(ish), gray(ish) blue.
MEMORY: I guess the when I think about the undulated quality of the tile I enjoy I think about older buildings from Europe. I was adopted from Germany when I was young and although I was too young to have memory of any of the places, I’ve been to Europe as an adult and I’m drawn to the textures, history and story of older buildings. They’re beautiful to me. The blue color of the cabinets remind me of water and the color of the sky on a clear sunny day. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about this until now, but the color of our floors feels more like sand and the cabinets are more like the ocean and the sky. Some of my sweetest memories with my wife and my boys are around tropical environments and water is calming to me.
Okay, maybe it’s a bit heady and some may even find it petty or even silly. But, for me, it’s helpful. It’s good to know why you’re drawn to certain things and not others. We could probably have another post, one day, on the things we AREN’T drawn to and explore why.
