Nomad.

Walking through the streets of Asia last night with colleagues, now come good friends, we were laughing about the state of things in this part of world.  How different they are from home.  Then, in mid sentence, I was struck by a realisation.

I no longer had any sense of relativity of where in the world I stood.

Thats a strange statement to make. After all, the usual condition of a person is to gauge distance from the location they most identify with. After all, you are either far from home, or you’re not.

Imagine, for a moment, you are half a world away from where you are now. Leading a life where you arrive and depart without notice, without a soul wondering when you arrive and where you will eventually disappear to.  Would you feel feel that distance, a tangible sense of connection to your point of origin? I would expect the answer to be yes.

So is my loss of that sense of place a crisis of identity? Or is it an evolution? Time will tell.  At that moment however, I accepted the realisation with zen-like calm. There was no loss, no concern, no sense of mourning. In hindsight, no crisis of any sort. Just an acceptance of a fact.  This is the life I lead.

Its quite a feeling.  An elemental freedom.

To be a nomad.