Nothing is permanent. This is the only truth for sure. And only those who have the courage to accept this truth also have the strength to refuse "to affiliate with those limiting social boxes." Those social boxes mostly, not only, but mostly are built to house a thousand fears.
Another inheritance of migration is the privilege of being able to let go and float in transience. To never be boxed because mostly, not only, but mostly boxes blind people to the truth of non-permanence and convince them that theirs is the template for all humanity. A dangerous lie that leads to the arrogant pretense that anyone has the right to decide the legality of a human being. Which as you so poetically reveal, is a right no human has without first crushing truth in their machinery.
I'm a nomad too. And we're blessed to be so. Blessed to stand outside the house and look in, whilst being inside the house and look out, not imprisoned but forever free. There is no loss in seeing human society for what it is, a gorgeous and beautiful and loving embrace of each other that can also slide into the embitterment of ego and pride and greed. You said it perfectly yourself - A person blessed by many gods and goddesses, and possessed by none - possessed by none is to accept impermanence and let go and float free in transience.
The nomad is the shaman ready to stand inside and outside. The nomad is the artist ready to reflect back upon itself that which no one else can see. The nomad is the philosopher ready to ask the questions no one else can imagine to ask. The nomad is the wild one without need for boxes or permanence for those things are the fences for the domesticated. The nomad dares to accept that nothing is permanent and in doing so shines like a human being in this "absolute empirical truth of reality."
Thanks so much Swarnali. I really enjoyed your essay, as you can tell by my rather impassioned reply :)
Oh Jonathan, you have elaborated this essay by adding these beautiful passionate insights. So incredibly deep and thoughtful. Social boxes indeed house a thousand fears, and we know we don’t belong there. Actually we have known it for a while.
It is weird isn’t it to belong to so many different houses of forms that you don’t belong anywhere at all? I have always felt like a kind of stranger in my own culture. A kind of internal isolation because of the lack of language for something that is mostly a feeling. But I am starting to suspect that the feeling itself is quite ancient.
I am loving the journey into the path of ‘the nomad, the wild one’ as you put it, and starting to embrace it but the world is still in two minds. The world is still not sure of us. Thank you dear one for this generous and heartfelt response. This is probably one of the best responses I received. I really appreciate your words because you spend them with thoughts, efforts and kindness. 💜
I was really only responding to the inspiration in your beautifully written essay, Swarnali.
It's interesting you say, "I have always felt like a kind of stranger in my own culture." I wonder f there are some who just have that feeling regardless of their history. if it might not be part of the human condition for some to follow the wild path as readily as others scamper into their domestication. There was a time when I thought my past cast a shadow acros my present and of course it does, but how much of my "outsider genes;" so to speak might be innate and part of what would always have made me?
I guess I'm saying that I agree with you that maybe this feeling is quite ancient, and to be cherished.
Anyway, thanks again for another good read. I'm always so pleased when your Substack comes pinging into my world :)
I do know for a fact that what we feel is universal and archetypal. Maybe Jung would have some answers for this phenomenon, like he usually does about things that are ancient part of the psyche. In any case I am glad to be both 'the outsider looking in and the insider looking out' if we say it in your language.
Yes, I bet Jung has some fascinating thoughts on this! Maybe its just that feeling that sent the human species to every corner of the globe, it wasnt so much to explore as to get away from the family ;)
Hahaha. There’s a very famous saying by Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass along the lines of what you mentioned here. He essentially says if you think you are enlightened then try going back to your family on thanksgiving to really test your limits. 😂
Swarnali, this piece speaks to my heart—perhaps to my ancestors’ hearts in me. “Even when some of us never moved towns, cities, or countries, the entire human race is migratory in nature.” This is such a simple and profound truth.
My goddess, the social boxes of “belonging” are so hard to grasp. How can we not see that we belong to no one, nowhere. And we belong to each other. And we belong to everywhere. All at once.
Yes so beautifully said Holly. Thank you. Yes, essentially because we don’t belong to anyone or anywhere, we are children of everything. It makes sense that you, more than anyone I know, will understand this traveller’s conundrum. 💜
Thank you. Beautifully written, powerfully told. You said "Like water, I have learned to move through the world—settling nowhere completely, carrying traces of every shore I’ve touched, forever in transit between what was and what might be. This is the inheritance of migration: to become a repository of ghosts, a living archive of all the homes we’ve loved and left behind." A description of my life as well as yours, of so many others too, and so beautifully said. It feels like a badge of identity which celebrates that we too, and all those like us, also bring gifts and we also belong.
We belong together in the wider community of the world who doesn’t belong anywhere. We belong to the planet herself. Thank you for reading this. I feel tremendously less lonely because you shared your story. 💜
"Like water, I have learned to move through the world—settling nowhere completely, carrying traces of every shore I’ve touched, forever in transit between what was and what might be. This is the inheritance of migration: to become a repository of ghosts, a living archive of all the homes we’ve loved and left behind."
Me too, Swarna, me too.
DNA tells me my paternal DNA traveled out of Africa, through the steppes of Central Asia, to northeastern Spain, and to Scotland. My genealogy tells me that my ancestors were then forced of the land and migrated to England; others to Canada and Australia.
My maternal DNA came to England by way of Scandinavia. Migrants all, and not a drop of "Anglo-Saxon" blood among them.
I have migrated from England to the Netherlands, to New Jersey, and now to Washington. Maybe I'm done. Who knows?
So bizarre isn’t it John that what we always think that we are made of qualities that make us but in real we contain so much of what is so unlike us. Your DNA footprint is nothing short of a miracle, you are a miracle. Just look at all the diverse ancestry. My god, I am mind-blown.
My ancestors are apparently part-indegenous bengal delta people and part ancient indo-aryan migrants from west asia and some part of it is also Austroasiatic Tibeto-Burma people. It baffles me beyond belief because this deep roots are so much different to what and who I think I really am. I am raised in secured folds of education imparted by the orthodox church, so even if I am not Christian, my identity is build so much in conversation with orthodox values. Its baffles me, and forces me to see the interconnected nature of our world.
There is no place for hate or difference. We are the world. 🌍 💜
My dear friend. I have left this essay unopened in my inbox until I finally had enough quiet minutes alone to savor it, and I am so glad I did, because I find myself in tears and in chills -- from solidarity and recognition, as so often happens with your writing. (though I wish it hadn't taken me so long! Where did February go?)
It's so strange, I have been working on an essay about intergenerational trauma and the question that plagues me: do its effects ever fade? Who among us doesn't carry something of these legacies? And now I read your essay and you answer the same question, but more powerfully, with a writing voice I always so admire!
"Can we stop lingering at the outstation of our own judgments?" Another question that haunts me. Can we find ways to stare our own judgments in the face? To see where it wants us to go, and what we could choose otherwise?
You are a gift to this world, Swarna. All these beautiful and painful cultures and histories mixed together in place, and in people. It is love that makes us whole, and you are a breathing embodiment of that truth. 🕯️💖🧚
My dearest Nia, I responding to this message with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. You don’t know how many time I thought about you, your family, and your ancestry while writing this piece. And many such personal histories that the world wants to look away from. But I am here to tell you that I will not. I am witness to your pain, hope, generational story, as I am to mine.
“do its effects ever fade? Who among us doesn't carry something of these legacies?” these inevitable questions in face of all the brokenness tossed our way, how relevant! I don’t know my dear sister, but maybe we can try working towards slowing its effect on our children. Maybe we live in the hope that the future generations do not carry the weight of their ancestors although I doubt what they would be without the mosaic of such resilience and wisdom churned out of pain and suffering. It also makes me question the inevitability of suffering in human growth, and whether comfort comes at the cost of essential freedom and self love.
I am waiting for your essay, because your voice and questions steer my soul. You are my north star. Thank you for doing all that you do. I am eternally grateful to have found your brilliant light in this cosmos - a light I never want to let go of in both happiness and grief. 💜🧚✨
"It also makes me question the inevitability of suffering in human growth, and whether comfort comes at the cost of essential freedom and self love." <-- these questions have disturbed my sleep for years now. Am I am who I am because of a violent childhood? Because of the suffering of my Jewish ancestors? Are my children's prospects as whole, resilient human beings lessened because of the care they've been given and how much I've tried not to recreate the mistakes of the past?
I hope not. Sometimes I worry about it, but I also see so many examples of younger people with empathy and compassion, who want a better world simply because they know it's right, rather than because they don't want others to suffer as they have.
I am so grateful for your light, too! I think of you often, and where our ancestors' worlds might have intersected on this planet, not in person but in culture and knowledge and art and FOOD. Spices!
Maybe the greatest act of resistance begins with knowing that we will never give up the hope for a better future for all, including one that provides safety and self-knowledge in equal measure.
I am sure, my dearest, that children are always better for all the love they have received. It is not necessary for a person to suffer to become better. I think suffering simply makes existence deeper, in a more hauntingly existential way. But all suffering must merge into love. And I feel there are more layered aspects of suffering that come with being human—things that even the most loved person cannot be protected from. The tender pain of existence itself. And that will, inadvertently, do its work on them.
I know that all you ever do, you do with love—and love will reign, Nia, so don’t worry. Even in our worst grief and fear, we share the great human condition. We are never alone. Our ancestors never truly go away; we are always held, even at our loneliest. And we are held in each other’s hearts—those who love us without attachment or possession.
Oh, I always dream of those intersections—of culture, food, art, and spices! It always feels surreal and yet grounding to me that we live on this shared planet. That we can be kin by choice and understanding. Such a human privilege. I feel honored to know and relate to you in such expansive ways.
Yes, yes, yes. I echo you here, my sister. The greatest resistance is never giving up on love and hope for a better world, a better future for all who inhabit it.
There’s a paucity of empathy in political culture and on social media. Thank you for sharing your experiences and pointing out that, “The luxury of belonging without question” is indeed a luxury, not to be taken for granted.
Indeed Julie, and to remember that even those of us who doesn’t belong are a shared part of humanity and not less than. In fact we are in the majority.
Nothing is permanent. This is the only truth for sure. And only those who have the courage to accept this truth also have the strength to refuse "to affiliate with those limiting social boxes." Those social boxes mostly, not only, but mostly are built to house a thousand fears.
Another inheritance of migration is the privilege of being able to let go and float in transience. To never be boxed because mostly, not only, but mostly boxes blind people to the truth of non-permanence and convince them that theirs is the template for all humanity. A dangerous lie that leads to the arrogant pretense that anyone has the right to decide the legality of a human being. Which as you so poetically reveal, is a right no human has without first crushing truth in their machinery.
I'm a nomad too. And we're blessed to be so. Blessed to stand outside the house and look in, whilst being inside the house and look out, not imprisoned but forever free. There is no loss in seeing human society for what it is, a gorgeous and beautiful and loving embrace of each other that can also slide into the embitterment of ego and pride and greed. You said it perfectly yourself - A person blessed by many gods and goddesses, and possessed by none - possessed by none is to accept impermanence and let go and float free in transience.
The nomad is the shaman ready to stand inside and outside. The nomad is the artist ready to reflect back upon itself that which no one else can see. The nomad is the philosopher ready to ask the questions no one else can imagine to ask. The nomad is the wild one without need for boxes or permanence for those things are the fences for the domesticated. The nomad dares to accept that nothing is permanent and in doing so shines like a human being in this "absolute empirical truth of reality."
Thanks so much Swarnali. I really enjoyed your essay, as you can tell by my rather impassioned reply :)
Oh Jonathan, you have elaborated this essay by adding these beautiful passionate insights. So incredibly deep and thoughtful. Social boxes indeed house a thousand fears, and we know we don’t belong there. Actually we have known it for a while.
It is weird isn’t it to belong to so many different houses of forms that you don’t belong anywhere at all? I have always felt like a kind of stranger in my own culture. A kind of internal isolation because of the lack of language for something that is mostly a feeling. But I am starting to suspect that the feeling itself is quite ancient.
I am loving the journey into the path of ‘the nomad, the wild one’ as you put it, and starting to embrace it but the world is still in two minds. The world is still not sure of us. Thank you dear one for this generous and heartfelt response. This is probably one of the best responses I received. I really appreciate your words because you spend them with thoughts, efforts and kindness. 💜
I was really only responding to the inspiration in your beautifully written essay, Swarnali.
It's interesting you say, "I have always felt like a kind of stranger in my own culture." I wonder f there are some who just have that feeling regardless of their history. if it might not be part of the human condition for some to follow the wild path as readily as others scamper into their domestication. There was a time when I thought my past cast a shadow acros my present and of course it does, but how much of my "outsider genes;" so to speak might be innate and part of what would always have made me?
I guess I'm saying that I agree with you that maybe this feeling is quite ancient, and to be cherished.
Anyway, thanks again for another good read. I'm always so pleased when your Substack comes pinging into my world :)
As am I when yours pop into my screen !
I do know for a fact that what we feel is universal and archetypal. Maybe Jung would have some answers for this phenomenon, like he usually does about things that are ancient part of the psyche. In any case I am glad to be both 'the outsider looking in and the insider looking out' if we say it in your language.
Yes, I bet Jung has some fascinating thoughts on this! Maybe its just that feeling that sent the human species to every corner of the globe, it wasnt so much to explore as to get away from the family ;)
Hahaha. There’s a very famous saying by Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass along the lines of what you mentioned here. He essentially says if you think you are enlightened then try going back to your family on thanksgiving to really test your limits. 😂
Swarnali, this piece speaks to my heart—perhaps to my ancestors’ hearts in me. “Even when some of us never moved towns, cities, or countries, the entire human race is migratory in nature.” This is such a simple and profound truth.
My goddess, the social boxes of “belonging” are so hard to grasp. How can we not see that we belong to no one, nowhere. And we belong to each other. And we belong to everywhere. All at once.
💕💕💕
Yes so beautifully said Holly. Thank you. Yes, essentially because we don’t belong to anyone or anywhere, we are children of everything. It makes sense that you, more than anyone I know, will understand this traveller’s conundrum. 💜
Thank you. Beautifully written, powerfully told. You said "Like water, I have learned to move through the world—settling nowhere completely, carrying traces of every shore I’ve touched, forever in transit between what was and what might be. This is the inheritance of migration: to become a repository of ghosts, a living archive of all the homes we’ve loved and left behind." A description of my life as well as yours, of so many others too, and so beautifully said. It feels like a badge of identity which celebrates that we too, and all those like us, also bring gifts and we also belong.
We belong together in the wider community of the world who doesn’t belong anywhere. We belong to the planet herself. Thank you for reading this. I feel tremendously less lonely because you shared your story. 💜
This is beautiful writing, poignant, connecting...
Thank you for giving time to this dear friend.
"Like water, I have learned to move through the world—settling nowhere completely, carrying traces of every shore I’ve touched, forever in transit between what was and what might be. This is the inheritance of migration: to become a repository of ghosts, a living archive of all the homes we’ve loved and left behind."
Me too, Swarna, me too.
DNA tells me my paternal DNA traveled out of Africa, through the steppes of Central Asia, to northeastern Spain, and to Scotland. My genealogy tells me that my ancestors were then forced of the land and migrated to England; others to Canada and Australia.
My maternal DNA came to England by way of Scandinavia. Migrants all, and not a drop of "Anglo-Saxon" blood among them.
I have migrated from England to the Netherlands, to New Jersey, and now to Washington. Maybe I'm done. Who knows?
So bizarre isn’t it John that what we always think that we are made of qualities that make us but in real we contain so much of what is so unlike us. Your DNA footprint is nothing short of a miracle, you are a miracle. Just look at all the diverse ancestry. My god, I am mind-blown.
My ancestors are apparently part-indegenous bengal delta people and part ancient indo-aryan migrants from west asia and some part of it is also Austroasiatic Tibeto-Burma people. It baffles me beyond belief because this deep roots are so much different to what and who I think I really am. I am raised in secured folds of education imparted by the orthodox church, so even if I am not Christian, my identity is build so much in conversation with orthodox values. Its baffles me, and forces me to see the interconnected nature of our world.
There is no place for hate or difference. We are the world. 🌍 💜
My dear friend. I have left this essay unopened in my inbox until I finally had enough quiet minutes alone to savor it, and I am so glad I did, because I find myself in tears and in chills -- from solidarity and recognition, as so often happens with your writing. (though I wish it hadn't taken me so long! Where did February go?)
It's so strange, I have been working on an essay about intergenerational trauma and the question that plagues me: do its effects ever fade? Who among us doesn't carry something of these legacies? And now I read your essay and you answer the same question, but more powerfully, with a writing voice I always so admire!
"Can we stop lingering at the outstation of our own judgments?" Another question that haunts me. Can we find ways to stare our own judgments in the face? To see where it wants us to go, and what we could choose otherwise?
You are a gift to this world, Swarna. All these beautiful and painful cultures and histories mixed together in place, and in people. It is love that makes us whole, and you are a breathing embodiment of that truth. 🕯️💖🧚
My dearest Nia, I responding to this message with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. You don’t know how many time I thought about you, your family, and your ancestry while writing this piece. And many such personal histories that the world wants to look away from. But I am here to tell you that I will not. I am witness to your pain, hope, generational story, as I am to mine.
“do its effects ever fade? Who among us doesn't carry something of these legacies?” these inevitable questions in face of all the brokenness tossed our way, how relevant! I don’t know my dear sister, but maybe we can try working towards slowing its effect on our children. Maybe we live in the hope that the future generations do not carry the weight of their ancestors although I doubt what they would be without the mosaic of such resilience and wisdom churned out of pain and suffering. It also makes me question the inevitability of suffering in human growth, and whether comfort comes at the cost of essential freedom and self love.
I am waiting for your essay, because your voice and questions steer my soul. You are my north star. Thank you for doing all that you do. I am eternally grateful to have found your brilliant light in this cosmos - a light I never want to let go of in both happiness and grief. 💜🧚✨
Swarna ... 😭😭😭
"It also makes me question the inevitability of suffering in human growth, and whether comfort comes at the cost of essential freedom and self love." <-- these questions have disturbed my sleep for years now. Am I am who I am because of a violent childhood? Because of the suffering of my Jewish ancestors? Are my children's prospects as whole, resilient human beings lessened because of the care they've been given and how much I've tried not to recreate the mistakes of the past?
I hope not. Sometimes I worry about it, but I also see so many examples of younger people with empathy and compassion, who want a better world simply because they know it's right, rather than because they don't want others to suffer as they have.
I am so grateful for your light, too! I think of you often, and where our ancestors' worlds might have intersected on this planet, not in person but in culture and knowledge and art and FOOD. Spices!
Maybe the greatest act of resistance begins with knowing that we will never give up the hope for a better future for all, including one that provides safety and self-knowledge in equal measure.
I am sure, my dearest, that children are always better for all the love they have received. It is not necessary for a person to suffer to become better. I think suffering simply makes existence deeper, in a more hauntingly existential way. But all suffering must merge into love. And I feel there are more layered aspects of suffering that come with being human—things that even the most loved person cannot be protected from. The tender pain of existence itself. And that will, inadvertently, do its work on them.
I know that all you ever do, you do with love—and love will reign, Nia, so don’t worry. Even in our worst grief and fear, we share the great human condition. We are never alone. Our ancestors never truly go away; we are always held, even at our loneliest. And we are held in each other’s hearts—those who love us without attachment or possession.
Oh, I always dream of those intersections—of culture, food, art, and spices! It always feels surreal and yet grounding to me that we live on this shared planet. That we can be kin by choice and understanding. Such a human privilege. I feel honored to know and relate to you in such expansive ways.
Yes, yes, yes. I echo you here, my sister. The greatest resistance is never giving up on love and hope for a better world, a better future for all who inhabit it.
There’s a paucity of empathy in political culture and on social media. Thank you for sharing your experiences and pointing out that, “The luxury of belonging without question” is indeed a luxury, not to be taken for granted.
Indeed Julie, and to remember that even those of us who doesn’t belong are a shared part of humanity and not less than. In fact we are in the majority.