Coming Home....

I'm coming home...
Coming home....
Tell the world, I'm coming home........

Those are the lyrics to a popular song playing on the airwaves right now. I hear it quite often on the radio.
And sitting in an airport, watching people...hustle and bustle.....walk up and down...rushing......
If you ask them where they are going...most will answer 'HOME'.

It's got me thinking.....in this day and age, where is home for most of us?
Travelling through America, it's a common question people have....Where you from?
Most people are from a different state....different city.....different country.
And it's quite normal for it to be so...
I think I realize more now than ever, how much people are on the move.
The concept of a Global Village is really a reality.

Growing up in Africa, the usual question I used to get is, which village are my people from?
Now, unknown to many, I didn't have a 'village' to call home.
I was a city girl....Born and Raised.
I never had grandparents somewhere else in some upcountry destination to go visit on school holidays.....
My grandparents and everyone in knew in my family were right there in the city with me!
It was a concept that was difficult for many people to grasp.
They always felt like I was not being entirely honest with them with my answers.
But being bi-racial at that time was also a concept that people were not quite used to as well.
So here I was, the non-villager with no village.....
No HOME.

Moving overseas, that question did become easier......
Where is home? Ofcourse Kenya!
But then I had moved with no intention of living in Kenya in the near foreseeable future.....So where was home now?
I embraced London with open arms and it was to me 'home' now.
I had family around...Great friends.....School....A job.....A place where I could put my head down everyday.
The place where I was living my life.
This was home now.

There is a popular saying that home is where the heart is.
I was soon uprooted from my English life...swept off my feet my an American fellow....And suddenly the dynamics of everything was thrown into disarray.
Moving to the Middle East with my husband was a temporary plan, with the possibility of making it more long term if that was agreeable.......
I following my heart.....
But there was an instant 2-way mutual dislike.....disregard.....disdain......between the Middle East and I.
THAT never became home.

There is a popular ideology that for a woman....And it exists in many cultures.....That a woman's home is where her parents are, or where her husband is.
I don't know how they factor women who are not married and not living with their parents....but hey that's a whoooole different topic for another day:-)
I guess I came to America somehow with that in my subconcsious.

So it's taken a bit of a mind shift, but now when people talk about America.....
Eh.....that's ME!
When people talk about American Muslims........hold up.........that's ME.
It's not THEM anymore....It's US.
THIS is HOME now.

I know so many people who have moved....Are thinking of moving....Are in the process of moving....from one place on this planet to somewhere else.
For personal reasons.
For professional reasons.
I wonder where they consider Home?
I think it has become such a dynamic amorphous concept and word in this day and age.
But I do wonder what people feel about it.....
If they even think about it...
Really think about it.
Does it matter anymore??

And so they announce it's boarding time for my flight.
My flight Home :-)

Treadmill of Life...

So after taking an unplanned hiatus from blogging......I'm back!:-)

The past couple of months have totally disappeared into fat air with a speed that I don't quite clearly recognize yet...nor understand.
But this is what happened.....
I started working again!
Which is an excellent thing, because that means the life of Suburban Barbie can be maintained at its core level.....But then this brought about the demise of my days as a Desperate Housewife.

The transition has been something else actually.
I hadn't anticipated the struggle.
The first week, both my body and mind were in total anarchy with the new timetable of things. I've never had so much resistance from my own body!
I guess this is where something called Will Power comes into play.
By the end of the second week.....We had resigned (by 'WE' i mean my body and mind) to our fate, and accepted the new way of life....
Or was it in fact the old way of life??

I'm the kind of person who throws herself into anything and everything I make a commitment to.
That can be a good thing.......Can be a bad thing.
When it comes to relationships, it can be good, WHEN you have a partner who is equally as committed as you......When you don't on the other hand......results in one free ride for a person who can easily take advantage of you.............
And relationships does include friendships......

When it come to the work front, here is where we may run into problems.
My boss usually is very happy, but my life doesn't necessarily reflect that happiness always.

When I was completing Medical School and going through my quarter-life crisis....It was a whole new journey of discovering who I was.
Coming right out of adolescence, then jumping right into Med School is not a great idea me thinks.
You grow up in Med School...surrounded by all things medical, and THAT becomes your area of comfort....
That's all you know.
That's all you are.
After I graduated, I looked at people who had done other degrees....chosen different paths......friends, relatives....They had already been working for a couple of years, and I was just starting out.
They seemed to know themselves. They seemed to know what they wanted out of life....well, at least at that point in their lives.
Most of us who graduated from Med School...if you gave us a couple of days of nothingness to do, we wouldn't know where to begin....or at least that's how i felt about myself.
I didn't know what I liked...or didn't like.
I didn't know what I wanted to do in 'free' time.
I didn't know myself.....OUTSIDE the sphere of the Medical World.
For all those years you get so consumed with the life of illness and treatment, that becomes your world.
When that stops for a fraction of a moment.......what do you have??

I began a journey of self searching. and that search included the part of me that was  a Medic.
And after much introspection, I was adamant that the 'Doctor' and the 'Person' in my would be kept separate.
My work wouldn't consume me.
My work wouldn't BECOME me.

For a lot of people, there's a comfort and safety in the titles life gives us.
I think many people around me just never quite understood that about me. I ran away from titles.
I never wanted to be put in a box.
I just wanted to be me.
When I pass onto the next life, I want people to remember me for being a great human being, not for the skew little letters that now come after my name on my business card.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the rat race.....That we don't even know where we want to be headed.

My choices so far in life, have been decided very much based on that....To always stay true to myself.
To always be me.
Some people get it....Some people don't.
So the first month back at work....was a whirlwind!
AND I did fall off the bandwagon!
Old habits.
Bad habits!

I got totally wrapped up in my new world.
But I had to remember not to lose myself in the mix of it all.....To still strike that balance.
I love my job, and proud of my achievements professionally....But i also love my husband, and my home, my family, my friends......My life.
So I have to keep working at striking  a balance.
It a working progress:-)