Cabin Fever, balance and Valpo

Now I do love my family, and like the place I grew up- my parents place- but I found myself this break experiencing immense cabin fever. Every time I go home it seems to get worse, because every time I go home the less and less its like the place I grew up. My friends have moved out and aren't around, the places I used to go to are in some cases gone, or changed in a very unfamiliar way, and this all adds to me experiencing a restlessness. I mean it is a great place to visit, for a time, but I don't know if I can call it home. It has nothing to do with family, instead it is the fact that it has become foreign to me. There are new faces in the places I worked, there are new buildings, new sights, just new every where. It is foreign to me, and how can we call the foreign home? It is now my parents place, and my home is in WA.
What does this have to do with cabin fever? Well over break there were things I wanted to get done, which are easy to do in WA because of how my place is and the familiarity. At my parents place there was an unfamiliarity which made me feel unable to do work, and in turn made me restless. I want to make clear that I am not making a judgement on places, neither is better than the other, but they are different, and therefore my interaction is differently. There is no quiet sanctum of prayer at solitude at my parent's place like at mine, but they have a huge TV and cable so I can watch the Red Wings. Both places are good but in different ways. I think that this difference and this foreignness brought me to a terrible case of cabin fever after about a week. I experience the same thing every time I go on vacation to a different place whether it be MI, or Mexico or Germany. I get restless after about a week of being somewhere and want to go home.

To continue on this train of self discovery, I discovered something about myself when I was on the train from MI to Valpo: I thrive on balance. Now when most people hear the I triple majored in physics, theology, and math they assume that I am crazy and must have had a miserable time of it...but they are wrong. I am finding that I am far less fulfilled and enjoying school doing one subject than I was when I was doing three. Such a terribly specialized focused study is unbalanced. It does not engage all parts of being and so leaves me(and maybe every body) unfulfilled. So far in my life, the most fulfilling and enjoyable times were those where I would be discussing trinitarian theology while calculating the ground state energies of a perturbed hydrogen atom.
I am a hybrid creature, a being dwelling in the thermocline of Reality and reality. In order to be happy I need to be rooted in the Real even while exploring the real. Now I may be unique, but I don't think so. I think that all humans are this hybrid creature, and most of our depression and sorrow arises because we either try to live in the real, or the Real, and never realize that we were made for both. We need balance.

I am visiting Valpo currently which is of course doing a number on my heart and soul. I love this place, the calm warmness of the Christopher Center commons, with the wonderful orange chairs, the peaceful contemplative narthex of the Chapel of the Resurrection, and of course the glorious awe inspiring Christus Rex and stained glass windows. It feels so terribly good to be back, and yet it inspires a nostalgic sadness as I realize that this Valpo is not my Valpo. There is a new Union(which is amazing) a new pastor, and tons of new things, as well as a lack of most of my friends. It is a similar place, but not the same, and it saddens me with the realization that my Valpo will never be again. Which is fine, it is all part of growing up, but I still can be sad about it.

Well time to go and enjoy some valpo cuisine and to just be happy being here again and seeing some friends at least.