The Price That Must Be Paid

It is a Monday morning, late August, Montreal, Canada.  I'm sitting at a table under a parasol, protected from a blazing hot late August sun.  I rest my feet up on a chair to become more comfortable.  I have a freshly brewed cup of coffee only four inches away from my computer on the left side.  Tucked under my laptop, is a small piece of paper with the names of movies that I should watch, recommendations from a friend.  There is not a single solitary cloud visible in the sky above me.  A breeze stirs the leaves on the trees, the leaves that will soon be turning to reds and browns and fading as the autumn approaches.  I am approximately 3,240 miles away from a place that I used to call my home, only the small matter of the great Atlantic Ocean lies between us.

Home.  A word that conjures up pictures of warmth, comfort, security and the familiar in the mind.  The place where family and friends live.  A place where you know every street, every alley, every corner, every nook and granny.  A place where almost every inch of its bricks, mortar, concrete and tarmac hold a memory.  The place where you had your first crush, fell in love for the first time, had your first kiss, had you heart broken.  The place where you first learned to ride a bicycle, watched your first movie at the cinema, rode your first ferris wheel and dodgems.  The place where you played badminton and frisbee on the back lawn with your parents, brother and sister.  The place where as a kid, you jumped through water sprinklers on hot summers days.  The place where you went to school.  The place where school summer holidays lasted an eternity.  The place where you tried your first cigarette and your first pint of beer.  The place where you learned to drive a car.  So many memories, all tied up into one single pin prick of a spot on a map.  Home.

Where is home?  I ask myself this question since I really no longer know how to answer it.  It was once a small village in the county of Kent, England, where I lived for the first nine years of my life.  Then it became a seaside town on the south coast of England, where I lived for a further twenty four years.  And it became Budapest in Hungary, after a period of living there for only nine months.  How was that possible?  How could it be that I so quickly and easily shifted my perception of home from England to Hungary?  I can remember the day that I first realised it.  I was waiting at an airport in Belgium with a colleague of mine from the Budapest office.  We had spent a week on the same management training programme that had taken place in Brussels.  As we sat having a drink, waiting for our flight, I can clearly recall turning to him and saying the words, "I cannot wait to get home."  And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realised the significance of what I had just said.  Budapest was now my home.  It was no longer England.

And following on from  the time I spent living in Budapest, where I lived for a little under three years, I have since stayed for extended periods and lived in Malaysia (7 months), New Zealand (3 years, 3 months), South Africa (5 months), Curacao (3 months), USA (3 months), Costa Rica (1 year), Canada (3 months) and some time back in the UK (5 months). People say to me that it must be very unsettling but I've never found that to be the case.  I realised that home for me is wherever my heart is and my heart is always in the present moment, in the present place.  So, wherever I am at a certain point in time, that is now the place that I call home.

This, I believe, is one of the prices that I pay for walking my path.  I am now homeless in the general meaning of the word.  My transient life means that I have lost all of the ties back to my past, to the places in which I grew up and which I formerly called home.  I am British by birth and parentage but after being away from the UK for so many years, I am now out of touch with British culture.  I find that I no longer 'get it'.  I am no longer able to understand the topical jokes, I don't know the programmes that are shown on TV, I have no idea about the music scene, my ideas and beliefs are founded on old information.  When I speak with my parents on the telephone, my mother will be speaking to me about some personality she has seen and she will say to me, "You know the one from..." but the truth is, I really don't. 

More than this though, is the price to pay for not being able to visit family and friends.  Not being able to pop around to say hello, not being there on birthdays, at Christmas, on special occasions.  Not having my family and friends around me on my own birthday.  Of the times when I arrive in a new place and there is no one around me that I know, when I am all alone.  My parents are getting older, they're both retired pensioners now.  I dread to think of a time when one of my parents or other close family member becomes seriously ill.  I have missed the funerals of my grandfather, a great aunt whom I was very fond of, and a close friend.  It is not easy when these things happen.  They test my resolve.  I ask myself whether I will some day regret not being able to spend time with the people that I love.  This is the biggest price I must pay for following my heart.


When you consider following your heart, you have to be aware of the consequences.  We are all responsible for our own decisions in life.  All I can say is that by following my heart, I am more happy and content than I have ever been.  I balance the price I have to pay for my lifestyle against knowing how I felt in my old life.  Yes, I must pay a price, because in life, there is always a price to be paid, but I will pay that price and I will not regret my actions.  To do anything else would be to betray myself and my own heart.  And nothing is worth that.