Who AM I Now?

So often we say things to our selves and to others - "I wish I could get back to how I was when..

." or I want things to go back to the way things were..." and "If only things were like they were..."

There is a bigger question under the surface of this kind of longing. If we can be in the stillness and in a moment of curiosity when we are feeling this loss, because that is what it is, a sense of loss, longing, disconnect from where we are in the present, we can ask ourselves some things:

What am I actually feeling in this moment? 
Where am I not at home within myself?
What was the true feeling or expression of the moment I am wishing I was in?

I used to roller skate at 2:00 in the morning in the suburban town I lived in, just after work, listening to Fleetwood Mac in my Walkman. It was how I would relax after a really busy day working 2 jobs, going to college classes, and not wanting to deal with whatever was going on in the apartment with my crazy roommate. It was a peaceful time, a train would go by, but mostly everything was quiet and still. The town bar was closing, so there was a few characters to watch, maybe a raccoon, but not much else. That was more than half my life ago. A lot of living has happened between now and then. Do I really want to go back to that? AND all the things going on then?

Nope.

What I can look more closely at was the essence of it. I was not less encumbered. I was not less stressed. I was not more or less wise. Frankly, I was not more or less free. I had a lot of responsibility and less resources to manage them. So what was the magic?

I gave myself the time. I created space. I fed myself. I took the moment to understand that I lived in possible. I didn't have more time than I do now. I had a mindset, a drive that said, I follow my instincts. I trust them. I need space and quiet and I will own that possibility in large or small ways. In this way, I preserved my liberation from the inside out. My circumstances did not own me.

When we find ourselves longing for THEN, ask where the connect and the disconnects are to and with your self. Ask Who Am I now? What is my care and feeding guide that I can honor, and find my way home? My way to the present. My way to my Self. It is not in the past. We are longing to be here now, and looking to the past to remember our selves, because we know we are still here. We are showing ourselves, through our inner code language, symbolic memory, translated into a misunderstood longing, that we have the ability to be at home again.