Coming Home--Things that Sabotage and Bless a Homecoming

For years, after coming home from a trip of more than a few days' duration, I would have a predictable "pattern" of behavior. I would get up the next day, do the wash, scurry around wildly trying to "catch up" and then tend to be mad at myself and others for the rest of the day. I never really sat down, until today, to think through why coming home and getting "re-started" was so difficult for me. Why did I do it today? Because I think as I mature I am becoming more confident of myself, and this means I tell myself that sometimes I just need to "sit still" until a good rhythm returns. No one really takes much time just sitting in a chair and thinking about life. But for me the one-hour session in my chair allowed three things to happen: (1) it let the images/people/thoughts from my time away sift through my mind so I could put them in proper "categories" (i.e., whom I wanted to contact immediately, whom I wanted to "keep on my list," whom I don't want to pursue; what I wanted to remember from the various encounters); (2) it let me sort through all the little "life tasks" that I couldn't do back here at home which I now need to attend to; and (3) it helped me think of the things that I want to do to "return" to my flow of work here at home. Because I never, before today, really engaged in that process of what I call "self-calming" activity, I tended to jump back into life with no thought for the kinds of conflicting emotions and "tugs" on me that were present on the morning after I returned from a trip.

For the rest of this and the next two essays, I would like to flesh out each of these three categories so that you, too, might be encouraged to "take stock" of yourself in a number of ways after a trip.

I. My Trip--and Return

In this case all my plane/car/lodging arrangements worked perfectly. This isn't always the case, and so I was grateful. I was in Kansas for six days, working with my former student Lance and a board of trustees on which he serves. I am discovering my "inner consultant," and Lance has been instrumental in helping me find an opportunity to do that. But I did many other things during the six days: I helped arrange a conference, where I met many people, especially a fascinating keynote speaker; I spent considerable time with each Board member; I attended a birthday party one evening and met several friends of a Board member; I had the chance to lead a class at a small Congregational Church in town and then I preached at two worship services. After the services something happened that I had never experienced. Two of the congregation members gave me CDs they had just cut. This is Kansas, and I have never run into so many people per capita with longings for creative artistic expression. Kind of blows your conception, doesn't it?

Well, upon my return home, and while sitting in my chair, I realized that my mind simply wanted to reflect on the people I had met and the conversations I had. In other words, I really wasn't ready fully to "return" to my work in Oregon. I realized that, again contrary to expectations, my life had "speeded up" in Kansas. I normally don't meet 20 new people with whom I have meaningful conversations in the space of a few days; what I needed was time for all these things to "settle" in my consciousness, as I sought an appropriate "place" for them in my memory. I guess I envision my mind as something like a vast storage system or, more attractively, an intricate system of underground caverns, in which there are places to put almost everything I learn. But we don't spend enough time sorting things out and putting them in the "right" locations. Our minds are, as it were, empty, while all the stuff that needs proper "storage" are piled up at the entry of the mind, waiting for someone to come along to put them in the right place. But we often never do this. What is the result? Things just stay piled up, one memory on another. Soon, the memories of trips tend to congeal with each other, or they, like perishable food, tend to rot or run out of their containers.

We need to take care to realize that the memories we accumulate through a trip, business or pleasure, are really very intricate and worthwhile memories. They require a lot of care and handling so that they can properly be "stored" in our mind. But the purpose of the storage is not simply to fill the vast underground vaults of the mind, but also to be able to bring them out to "show" to others, like a Kodak of the mind. We take pictures and tell about them to others. But who takes "pictures" of the 20 conversations you had, sits down and thinks through them, then files them away in the "proper" places of the mind so that you can draw on them later for strength, instruction, humor, or to continue the relationship with the person? Sometimes we don't know that a memory needs to be sifted and stored with as much care and insight as a family heirloom.

One Example

Let me give you an example of one conversation I "stored away" that I may never bring out of storage but which I now have, forever, in the proper place in my mind. Before church on Sunday I mingled with a few of the 40 or 50 attendees. I sought out one man I had met briefly on a previous occasion because I knew he was a local elementary school principal. I told him my interest in words, and that I was sorry he missed my adult education class on words. Then he told me that the school where he was principal had a 93% minority enrollment and that a considerable number of the children were performing at "below grade level" in vocabulary/words. I know I have never worked with elementary students on buiding vocabulary, but I know that before I go to Kansas next time I will drop him an email (I hope he remembers me!), and I will ask him if I can stop in on him in his office to talk about words and kids. Again, nothing may ever materialize, but by taking time to "sort through" this memory and place it in a fine and safe place in the caverns of my mind, I have not only given myself some pleasure but I have saved something potentially worthy of future attention.

Conclusion

Thus, the one of the first things I need to do upon returning, and I finally took time to do this, is calmly to recall all the vital encounters I had during the trip, to determine what from that encounter was memorable, to (as it were) put my name on that encounter and place it with care in the deep parts of my mind (if you have trouble "remembering" things, make a "note" to yourself in a notebook of the conversation and where you have "stored" it--i.e., what "triggers" it). Now I have 20 more "friends" and can draw upon these conversations in the future as I build my life.

The fact that I only did this to a small extent in past years contributed to my misery upon homecoming, even though I was delighted to see my family in the past.

I need two more essays to describe the other two points from above.

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