There and back again

That which we most desire is that from which we are most fervently fleeing; we spend our whole lives looking for the one thing we thought to leave behind when we went out to see what life holds for us.  What is this mysterious, most desired of objects?  This terrifying yet wonderful thing?  Every human heart, above all else yearns for Home.  Not a certain house or condominium, not a specific country or city, but rather that place, be it cave or mansion, wherein we are accepted and loved for who we are (not what we have done or will do) and can be ourselves without fear.  But it is the one thing modern society most abhors, for therein we cannot bow any longer before the sacred shrine of Me, but must rather consort and fraternize with others, sometimes sacrificing our immediate wants and desires for the good and benefit of others, as they in turn do on occasion for us.  But fear not, modern convenience has done away with all such necessity.  Just turn on your 'device' and enter a world away from the dull and demanding plebs that make up your immediate household; join your virtual family and ignore those of flesh and blood.

Your virtual friends understand, they like you for who you are, they speak your language, they never ask you to clean your room or turn down your music, that's what a family should be!  Except, when you need them most, when that moment of crisis or grief or tragedy comes unexpectedly upon you, where are they?  It is a tale older than the internet, older even than the printing press, old as man himself.  We think we know better, we think the world holds something better for us, and we do need to leave home one day and establish our own life, but it won't look anything like the one I had growing up, no sir!  It will be different, it will be better: exciting, interesting, I'll do whatever I want when I want!  And after all our wanderings and failed experiments and dead ends, eventually we come to the strange realization that what we thought we wanted we don't really want after all and what we truly desire most we already had but left it scornfully behind us.  Such is the tale of lost Eden and the Prodigal Son; it is the whole history of Israel and of man himself.

There is a pattern for human happiness and thriving, eventually the wanderer does come stumbling home in the dead of night after much misery, disappointment, and sorrow, and knows he would have been wiser to have stayed there in the first place.  But our hearts yearn after something and we go forth seeking it, only to find it is nothing this world can provide and that it must come to us, and may well do so with never so reckless a faring forth, if only we are wise enough to hear its whispered call.