Coming home to our true selves

When I pass by rows of houses, I get curious about the little lives they live. What do they do for work? How many kids do they have? Do they knit for a hobby or prefer to sew their placemats? Do they read the newspaper or do the crossword puzzles on Sundays? Do they talk at dinners or eat separately? Who shovels the snow on the driveway or do they wait for it to melt away? What do they talk about on quiet evenings or do they amuse themselves by watching the humdrum noise of the television?

I take the same train every day and when I go past these houses at night, I see flickers of their lights through their windows; some fluorescent white while others dimmed by soft yellow hue. The lights allow me to get a glimpse of their existence; a mother preparing dinner in her kitchen, a couple eating their food in silence, somebody playing games on their computers, or kids with toys in their shared spaces. Nobody ever chronicles these daily oddities that we do at home. We are only judged by what we do outside in front of other people but what we truly are, are these routines of existence that are done privately.

All of us wear different masks in public.

We can never know others from the outside. How we perceive people is based on what they choose to mention to us and this could result in an unhelpfully limited and edited picture of normality. Beneath all of our serious facades in public, all impressive grown-ups sunk into fear, doubt, and regret when alone in their homes.

Going home is like coming home to our true selves. It can be tiring to navigate social situations or exercise only certain parts of you that are more presentable. At home, we can remove all the masks of pretenses and just exist. It is a place where we undress our souls and still get loved for our edgy flaws, wrinkled yet raw.

I tell my daughter all the time to be kind because not everybody goes home to a house full of love. Sometimes the warmth she takes advantage of at home is not what other people go home to. I was raised in a house that constantly told me that nobody would come and save me, so we always have to save ourselves first but as I left home, went abroad, and had family, I realized the fallacy of this. Many people have saved me, even if they did not intend to. It can be as small as words from a writer, a smile from a stranger you met on the street, lyrics to a song, or your usually grumpy cat purring on your lap. The world is harsh and cruel but every day I see pieces of kindness that make me realize that we are all saving each other every single day in tiny, seemingly insignificant ways.

My hour-long commute home allows me time to brood over the million possibilities of what the lives are of the people I’ve seen on trains, on buses, and those I’ve walked past outside our village. The old lady walking her dog could be a grandmother of five, a high schooler on the 8 p.m. bus could be coming from cram school, a man carrying honey cookies could be a father coming home after a business trip overseas. These imagined scenarios in mind enable me to put some sort of humanity in the nameless faces I meet every day.

But sometimes I get the yearning to ask them what their homes are like. Does your home feel like comfort and security or is it a dreadful weight where your people meet you with disappointment? How does it feel like to open the doors of your home after you get drenched in the rain? Do you have people to go home to or just relish the quiet solitude of your aloneness?

Many of us go back to our houses yet still have that feeling of not being where we want to be. Many wander around somewhere, anywhere but go back to their own houses. At the end of the day, we are all trying to find a home—to belong to a place, a person, or even to ourselves.

I know I am not alone in romanticizing the lives of strangers. Are they happy? Where are they going? Are they on their way to a party, to a date, to the hospital, to a funeral, to work, or to their homes?

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