Not Home

Home is not the answer.

The strange thing is, I don’t really have a home — at least not in the way most people would define it. And yet, the old phrase home is where the heart is feels unexpectedly accurate from where I’m standing.

Right now, the Wudang Mountains feel closer to home than anywhere else. That feeling was reinforced after sitting down with a friend who has just returned from Italy. He seems genuinely happy to be back here. His description of returning to Europe, though, sounded exhausting. Disorienting. Nothing like a return at all.

I don’t want to fall into that same pattern in ten months’ time — or however long this journey lasts. The difference now is that I’ve started writing The Mind Monastery online course, and it’s stirred two clear reactions: excitement, and the sober realisation that there’s a great deal of work ahead.

That doesn’t scare me. I know how to do the work. What does stand out, though, is how much I need to improve physically — strength, flexibility, resilience. If what I’m imagining is going to exist in any real way, my body has to support it.

That part feels non-negotiable.

The motivation is simple. I don’t want to be sitting with a friend a year from now, dissecting what went wrong, or listing what I should have done differently. I know that conversation too well.

I can’t build what comes next while dragging the weight of old regret behind me. Giving less than everything to something that matters no longer feels like an option.

Still, I’m aware of how easily resolve can turn into performance. Into noise.

Later, I sat in on a meeting. A lot of talking. Circular, familiar. I didn’t mind it. In a way, I’m being paid a little to listen, to observe how others frame teaching, structure meaning, sell certainty.

The deeper I move through other people’s ideas, the clearer my own become. Not through opposition — through contrast.

For now, that feels like enough movement.
Not an arrival.
Just a direction quietly taking shape.