A Restless Heart - Finding Ourselves Where We Are

by Marci Houle (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Poland

Back in the summer of 2016 I attended an event that drew an estimate of 3 million people to Krakow, Poland. I was already familiar with the area: Wadowice, Czestochowa, Krakow... the pilgrimage was a common one, and I had fallen in love with Poland years ago. So when the chance came to visit again, I jumped. I didn't mind that I was one of many, or that this trip was likely to be less personal as a travel experience due to the overload of visitors to the area. I was focused just on the spiritual, and welcomed every difficulty, every inconvenience, every missed moment. I didn't expect to experience a home-coming unlike any I had ever felt before. I didn't expect to travel in the familiar and find that, no, this didn't detract from the joy of traveling. And I certainly didn't expect to encounter the connections that came to me from around every corner. When I travel, I expect to experience the exotic, the unconventional. That's what the adventure of travel is all about! New sights, new people, new foods... assailing the senses with the joy of each little thing in a way that is so difficult to capture when you're always in one place. Traveling is supposed to take you away from the common, to enlighten your heart and open your mind, bringing you both knowledge and understanding of a world that is not your own. This trip, however, was different. And I think it was the beginning of my life-long journey as both a writer and an artist searching not just for the new, but for the ordinary. Of the millions of people there, it felt like faces from "home" were all I could see. Everywhere I turned, the unfamiliar quickly became familiar. Old friends. Old colleagues. Current friends. And even some new friends who became old friends within the span of an hour, because we were all so excited to be there together. If you imagine that encountering the welcome of familiar faces and friends from all over the globe was limiting or less exciting than making entirely new connections, then you would be quite mistaken. To be in a city that is not really your own... only to find that, no... yes, it is! To find that wherever you are, there is your home, no matter how far away from the "commonplace" you might be. It is one thing to have roots, to have a solid foundation for where you came from and where you've been - it is quite another to grow past those roots, to branch outwards, until no possible place or situation can but welcome you as one bearing fruit. I didn't miss out on a single moment that summer, and every inconvenience was traded for something far more beautiful: a real ownership of who I was and what I could do in that moment, in that place, for whoever happened to be around me. And I never felt lost, or looked over, and every stranger's smile was suddenly the smile of a friend, the welcome of someone who understood the simple truth of humanity's common, permanent link of beauty and goodness. The people I encountered in Krakow, the places I took them and the extraordinary places we were able to see, were all part of a larger picture that I believe only becomes clear when you allow yourself to be drawn by your spirit, not by your head. I believe that the best place for a restless heart is not hidden away or restricted, but outside of yourself, where you will find not a hidden garden, but a shared paradise spanning every country, every continent. No matter where we go, no matter how far or how often we roam, we can find ourselves at home if only we look to the beauty of what it really means to have a restless heart - the heart we all share as human beings. Every one of us is on a journey. Every one of us is looking: for a purpose, a place, a person, and project. Where will you go next? Where will your travels take you, on your journey to find the familiar?