The Home Planet: As life around us changes, we learn to change with it

The moment I opened my eyes, I knew something was different. The light was coming into the room from a new direction. From a different window.

Nothing looked the same. The door wasn’t in the same place. My bed was against another wall. The room was a different color. My favorite painting wasn’t hanging where I could see it when I woke up.

And everywhere, stacked around the room, were boxes. Lots of boxes.

Even half asleep I noticed that the world around me didn’t sound the same. The street sounds on the other side of the window were strange and unfamiliar. Different dogs were barking. Even the wind in the trees sounded different.

I blinked and tried to get my bearings. That’s when I remembered: I don’t live there anymore. I live here now.

Just like that, everything had changed. One day I lived in another house and the next I woke up in a new room – a new home – with new sounds and smells; with a new route to the kitchen for that first cup of coffee in the morning, a new backyard, new neighbors and even a new way to get to work.

I was in a new place.

This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve moved. And it isn’t the first time I’ve opened my eyes and discovered that my view had changed overnight.

Over the years, it happens a lot. To all of us. Sometimes, you don’t even have to move.

In the course of a lifetime, there are so many mornings when your first thought is, “I’m not there any more. I’m here now.”

When you lose someone, to death or just the death of a relationship, isn’t that what comes to mind when you swim to consciousness? He’s gone. She’s gone. I’m not there. I live here now.

Then there’s graduation, getting a job or losing a job, getting marriage, having a child, watching children leave to start their own lives, divorce, finding new loves, learning to live alone. These are all occasions that bring a new outlook whether we’re ready or not.

We face the morning and say: I’ve moved. This is where I am now.

Life changes. And it changes us. And that means that every so often, our view is altered.

I got lucky this time. For me, it’s only a new address. I just have to worry about barked shins and stubbed toes until I get unpacked and settled in. Until I make myself at home.

I’ve got the same cat sitting on my chest, asking to go out. The same family around me. The same baggage – good or bad – that follows us with every move.

In other places, across the street or across the world, people wake every day to find themselves in rooms and situations and lives they didn’t get to choose.

I’ll get used to what’s on either side of my new front door – I chose it, after all – and pretty soon I won’t even think about where I was before.

Home is where we find ourselves.

Until the view changes again.