Coming Back to My Last Home

Nostalgia, Release, and Relief - Lessons from California

Dated April 22, 2025 - Santa Clara University

I’m sitting by the fountain outside my college dining hall. The water blows in the wind, and catches the afternoon sun as it sets. I see Tanya, a former professor and current friend walk by, coming from the talk she just gave, which I attended.

Moments ago, I ran into my old accounting professor, and asked if he remembered when I slept through half his midterm, only to ace it. He, unfortunately, did not; an unneeded reminder.

When I stepped off the train this morning, a friend of mine from my graduating class, Anthony, came up next to me, and told me he recognized the back of my head.

Somehow, this place still holds the trappings of home for me, despite that it hasn’t been home for five years. And there’s paradox in that for me. There’s paradox in the way I know the streets and the fastest ways around campus, but don’t know any of the students, and don’t really belong here.

An old home isn’t a current home.

I think I’m just getting to the age where that even makes sense in my brain. Last time I was here, I had lived in my hometown, and I had lived here. That was it.

Today, I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve lived lifetimes, and yet, this is still the last place that truly felt like home.

And I’m not sure how to make sense of that; how home could be here, but is no longer here… How the past can exist in my memories, and the place can continue to progress without me, and yet it’s no longer an immediate part of my life.

Does that make sense? It’s certainly a normal human experience.

I suppose that what I feel when I come here is a familiarity more than a belonging. And there’s a difference between those two things that’s important. Often, I see myself and others choose familiarity, when they’re really longing for belonging.

We can be familiar with our situation, even if it’s not serving us. The question is: How do we know where we truly belong, and if it’s in an unfamiliar realm or place, how can we let go of what’s familiar to create the space for what could come, and to what we could truly belong?

This process of letting go sometimes eludes me, despite the tattoo on my wrist. Somehow, I thought that in getting a tattoo, I would simply have magical letting go powers, but alas, I am human like the rest of us.

Today, in Tanya’s talk, she described the experience of a trapeze artist who must release the bar, float through space, and then grab the next one. If you wait too long to let go, you simply settle to the bottom and have to start again. And so having the courage and skill to let go is crucial, but it’s that moment in the air that holds the richness—Will I be able to grab the next one? Will I make it in time? Will it actually be there?

These are the questions that haunt the unpracticed trapeze artist before letting go, and which hinder our ability to actually make that courageous act, and choose to release control for a split second, knowing that something will come to catch us.

Nostalgia. Release. Relief.

This is the pattern of our lives, as chapters open and close, and epic stories conclude in final breaths. Life ends, moments leave us, and yet… Yet, the richness of it all simply cannot be avoided. This eternal abundance in front of us; in the chiming of bells or the singing of birds, in the cool wind or a hot breeze; it’s all here.

And so I sit here looking out at an old home, remembering moments of laughter shared, love discovered, and wretched tears released. It’s all part of the canvas; each thread is equally important to the life we’re living.

Can this be enough?

Can I release? Can I let go? Can I breathe a little easier? Might I let my hands ease off the throttle just a bit?

And breathe.

The fountain water blows across my face and the sun sets. How many days and nights I spent here at this once-home, only to find myself feel so… fragmented from its belongingness today.

Yet the sweetness of nostalgia and the familiarity of friendly faces and known trees and pathways do welcome my heart. And so I do belong here.

Strange the way old chapters are held in our histories like memoirs of the soul, waiting for the dusty pages to be riffled and read again, and yet never to be felt that same way we feel life in the now.

Aha! The now.

A return. A home.

In France, at Plum Village, there is a sign that simply reads “I have arrived. I am home.”

Perhaps all places are like that. Perhaps all moments are a gateway to arrival. Could that be the case? Could I be here in a memory and still be home? Could I belong right now?

I hear college students laugh. The sweet smell of freshly opened roses spreads in the springtime air. A bitterness slides off of me. Relief.

Perhaps there is nothing to do at all, nothing to search for, no life to lead that is better or worse than the rest. Perhaps it all amounts to nothing in the end. Perhaps I could let myself rest.

Truth sits on the saddle like a born rider, and lingers in the scent of a season. “Release control,” life whispers through the echos of time, “release control.”

And so I breathe again deeper, and I feel the coolness of California night encroaching on my summery attire. I must leave this place. And yet, it will always be here in the thumping of my heart, which relishes the flavor of a memory.

Tread lightly on your path, for your soul’s way is always clear in the starless night.

Reach gently through time, for you are the navigator of all dreams.

Breathe easily, dear one, and rest in un-knowning.

Land here.

Release control.

Faolan

PS. For a more in-depth look into my return to Santa Clara University, you can subscribe to my youtube channel, where I will shortly-ish be posting a video about it.

Thanks for being you <3