Where is home?

My first week on holiday was reflective. Spent it with the best of friends. I felt loved, inspired, reminded that I am capable of important, not solely self-serving work.

In the second half, I spread myself thin trying to cram everyone in. Place to place. Ubers and checked-out conversations. Money down the drain. Inside a heatwave. Silly stuff. 

Biggest takeaway is that home is no longer so. In Nigeria, I now find the people hostile and grabby. Loud and unfeeling. Prices are outrageous. Food remains delicious but this is gunpowder. Tensions have risen. Life is hard here. Something will have to give, soon. 

I find myself saying, often, I can’t wait to be back home. But England isn’t home either. 

My friend Selase once shared this Miriam Adeney quote:

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

In Naij I tried desperately to (re)find home. In the city from whence I spawned. In Lagos where I used to hustle. In people. Some felt familiar, others were strangers. None, not a single person or place, smell or taste, felt even half like home. 

So I have come out of the two weeks depleted. Feeling as though my energy was expended chasing tail.

Selase shared the aforementioned quote after I asked his thoughts on this one from Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny; 

“…there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”

Then I thought about it some more, and followed up with this:

“I disagree with the quote I have sent, but just slightly. I think if you do life right, a complete home exists for you inside yourself.” 

Selase agreed at the time and still does.

So that’s where I’ll leave you, my gentle reader. 

With the conclusion that the self as a place is the one true home. 

Nurture yourself, nourish it with good food, input clean data, cultivate robust relationships, build your physical body, and make your home a place inside of which you can sit, with which you can navigate the world. 

You - as person and place - are all you have.

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My weekly planner has gone to shit. I did a few of the things, just didn’t log them. But na who give up fuck up. I continue to try.

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Honourable mention to new friends Kayode and Seyi. Thank Kayode for his wonderful smile, gorgeous babe, and the gift of handmade clothes. Thank Seyi for boozy giggles on the floor, intellectual companionship, and conversations about the built environment.

Enough.