Comfortable

We tend to think of home as a specific location — a defined physical space where we feel safe and entitled to be ourselves. But home, like so many other things that profess to be something more concrete, is really just an emotion. “Home” is the emotion of belonging you get from very familiar places.

~ David Cain from, http://www.raptitude.com/2009/12/two-simple-tricks-to-be-more-comfortable-in-your-own-skin/

Sometimes…
—not always, not often. I’m still a deeply flawed human being who is happy to be a work in progress.

But sometimes people tell me I’m “different” or “intense” because I move more slowly than most people, or I seem [they think I “seem”; I actually “am”] to be paying attention, or I seem [again, actually “am”] to be particularly considerate or thoughtful. Sometimes people find this really unsettling; I’ve had people physically twitch in the process of avoiding my glance. To those people, I’m sorry that a heartfelt glance was too much for you at that moment. (Not sarcasm.) But sometimes, a heartfelt “Hello! How are you today?” is just the thing people need.

Often…
—again here with the caveats.

But often I’m wondering why everyone seems to be in such a hurry. I believe I understand why they are; I’m assuming their reasons are the same as my reasons were. Often I sit down and feel perfectly at home. Often after a bit of post-just-sat-down day dreaming, I’ll have a brief moment of a sort of fully immersed realization that I’m not anywhere remotely near my geographic home. And that just makes it all the more enjoyable to feel at home.

Slow down. Relax.
If things are going badly, relax for they will not last.
If things are going well, relax for they will not last.

ɕ