returning home: why we need to get lost first
we often speak of being disconnected from our true nature, as if we’ve lost something we once had, as if there’s a place we need to return to. but what if the longing itself is the key? what if the distance we feel is not just a problem, but a necessary part of the journey?
research in cognitive anthropology shows how deeply our environment shapes our perception. westerners, surrounded by rectangular rooms and linear structures, may interpret visual cues differently than indigenous peoples, whose lives are more attuned to the organic flow of nature. this isn’t just about lines on a page; it’s a metaphor for how we’ve learned to see the world through frames and angles, rather than cycles and relationships. it’s a reminder that the ancient, innate wisdom we seek was never lost. it was only obscured by the layers of modern life, waiting to be remembered.
we only ever find our way back because we were lost to begin with. not just lost, but really lost. the kind of lost that carves grooves into your soul, that forces you to confront the same patterns, the same wounds, until you finally see them for what they are: not just obstacles, but the very path itself. the trauma is the raw material for the wisdom we’re so desperate to reclaim. the loss, the searching, the adapting—these are not detours, but essential chapters in the story of becoming. we adapt, we grow, we build, and sometimes, we build ourselves into corners. but it is from those corners that we begin to see the room for what it is: a space we once knew, now transformed by our absence.
we don’t heal by staying whole. we heal by breaking. by forgetting, by wandering so far from ourselves that the return becomes a revelation. the disconnection is not the enemy; it’s the contrast that makes the connection meaningful. and yes, we repeat the same cycles, individually, collectively, as if we’re bound to relive the same lessons until we learn them in our bones. maybe because the patterns are the teachers. because the wounds are also the maps. because we need the darkness to recognize the light.
this isn’t about arriving at some perfect state of wholeness. it’s about the wandering. It’s about the stumbling, the falling, the getting back up and doing it all over again. this time, perhaps, with a little more awareness. it’s about realizing that the very things we resist: the pain, the repetition, the sense of being unmoored. those are the things that make the return possible.
so yes, let us honor the ancient, innate wisdom we've forgotten. let us grieve the ways we've harmed the earth and ourselves in the name of progress. but let us also see that the longing to return is not proof of failure. it is proof that we carry something worth returning to. because you can't come home if you never left. and the wisdom we seek was never hidden from us; it was simply waiting to be recognized. something we can only do once we've known its absence. it is the wandering that gives the wisdom its weight. without the losing, the forgetting, the long way around, "home" would be nothing but a place we never noticed.
loie hollowell's vibrant and evocative paintings refer to human bodies as sites of sensuality and sexuality, desire and disgust, pleasure and pain.
