Subtle sound layers

At this time in one week, I hope to be heading back to America.

It's easy to answer, "Yes, I am going home for Christmas!" when people ask, but what, in reality, is home?

The longer I live, the less I find it easy to define home.

Is home a place? Is home my room in my parent's house? Is home the town I spent most of my life in? Is home my room here in the 'Stan? Is home being with my family? Is home being with D? Is home a state more than a place?

Is there peace to be found on earth, and is that peace really home? Is there really to be joy to the world?

Sometimes, I look in the mirror and I don't recognize who is there. It's not just that I'm getting older, that I've put on weight, that my hair is growing out [no, not on my face, Mom, don't be worried]. It's that in ways subtle and ways gross, I have changed in the last two and a half years.

So what is home? Is it a place that didn't change while I did? If that's true, I can never go home, because it always changes. Is it completely subjective or is it quantifiable? Is it my home culture, or is it the strange amalgamation that I have come to live in?

Then I wonder why finding home is so important.

Because when my wonderings are at the end, I know where my home is. My home is not in the world, my home is not in the things that will not last, my home is not in the falsehoods that I put stock in, my home is literally where my heart is. I have set my heart in things worthwhile, and things that will last. My home will Last.

Heaven and nature sing.