Leaving home and the necessity of the inward journey
This month, I’ve been thinking much more about identity, and the importance of leaving our comfort zones and our familiar realities to test and stretch our own understanding of who we are and what we are capable of.
Leaving everything we know behind is tradition. And overextending our stay in the nest may limit our sense of personal identity. It is the act of continually leaving the nests we’ve created for ourselves that keeps us fully alive and steady on the journey towards unveiling who we are, where we are going, and how to get there.
Think about the first time you left home.
For me, I was 10 years old going to secondary school. I was so excited, and my mother was visibly sad letting her boy go. Even when my dad dropped me off in school and drove off, the excitement was still bursting through me. I was skipping around the school compound like a deer on a beach.
But when I had to go to bed that night I realised for the first time that I was alone– for the first time in my life–in a hostel filled with people I had never met, with voices and unfamiliar conversations buzzing around me as I closed my eyes with little tears threatening to break through.
Home is comfort, and out there in the world is the wilderness. But it is there that we find formation and identity. It is there that we strip away expectations of who we are–defined for us from birth by family or communities we are born into.
Psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum illustrates this well,
Who am I? The answer depends in large part on who the world around me says I am. Who do my parents say I am? Who do my peers say I am? What message is reflected back to me in the faces and voices of my teachers, my neighbors, store clerks?
Numerous studies have established the known fact that when we are in a group, we have a strong tendency to conform the group norms. In last week’s blog, we discussed why this is evolutionary. We all have a psychological lean towards group identification driven by the desire for safety, acceptance and normalcy. Our membership in the communities we grow up within–family, friends, religious groups, community gatherings–form the basis of our identity.
I was in the “wilderness” at 10–in boarding school–beginning that necessary journey of creating my own identity in the world. Now I had to keep my own time; manage my groceries and provisions until my family came with the monthly refills when they visited; create my study routine; choose my own friends; fight my own fights; manage my laundry; and choose my habits and identity.
But I had experiences like this again and again: at 12 years old, at 17, at 21, 23, 26, 28 and even last year at 29!
We all have our own stories and experiences of leaving our comfort and our nests in search of who we are. Every human person goes through that rite of passage.
Movies, literature and art have been created around the act of leaving home in search of self, identity and purpose.
The movie Hobbit, adapted from the book by Tolkien is the perfect illustration.
At the outset of the story, Bilbo prized the familiarity of home above all else. His home at Bag End, with its predictable routines, offered safety, permanence, and certainty about who Bilbo was and his place in the world.
Gandalf's sudden offer of adventure creates a tension between Bilbo's want of safety and the possibility of an unknown identity out there in the world.
But as Bilbo, and indeed, we, the audience, find quickly, he is capable of so much courage beyond the suggestions of his tame and calm exterior. But it was through struggle, doubt and uncertainty out there in the world that he re-forges his identity.
He is tempered through adversity as he walked through the inner journey of contending with his fears and worked through the external struggle of surviving in the wilderness.
Through the practice of always leaving the familiar, we engage in the difficult but necessary process of crafting our place in the world, building our power of self-confidence and the skill to self-validate rather than rely on external confirmation (well-meaning or not).
Leaving your nest does not have to be a physical journey, it could be the exploration of something different. Here are some suggestions to get us all thinking:
Go somewhere new alone, follow people much different than you on social media or get into a conversation in real life, or try an activity you’ve always wanted to but felt too nervous or “not skilled enough.”
Have an open conversation with someone really close to you. Ask them for strengths or positive qualities they see in you that you may not recognize or give yourself credit for. Use it as an opportunity to refine your sense of self.
Make a list of your core values and purpose. Then evaluate if your current life path aligns. If not, set 1-3 tangible steps you can take over the next 3-6 months to course correct.
Write your own “leaving home” story either from your past or an aspirational one for the future. What would the story be? What would you learn about yourself? Turn it into a recurring tangible goal to remind yourself to continuously leave the nest.
This essay was first published in Finding North, my weekly Newsletter
