I am back in Newfoundland, a place where I used to live ten years ago. It is where I did my PhD. Back then I had an academic project, a girlfriend, a house, a car, a dog. For me, there was lots of life, or so it felt.

I also started doing meditation and tai chi. Some of my very good friends still live here, some have moved away, continuing their lives somewhere else.

Newfoundland is as different as it could be from Siena, the place where I was born. On the "Rock" you have an Ocean, cliffs, boats, fishermen, whales, moose, waterfalls, bogs, cloudberries, desolate trails, and no olive trees, no vineyards, no bruschetta, no Palio, no high school friends, no family. Nothing I grew up with. Nothing to remind me of the place where I was born.

The other day, when I stepped out of the plane, I had the feeling that I was, anyhow, returning home. It felt like there was an easiness of being, a relaxation into something familiar and safe.

The place I needed to be, for now.

So what then makes a place home? Is it the place where you were born? Is it where your family is? Or where you have collected the most images? Where you have created the best version of yourself? Or is it, as the saying goes, where the heart is?

To me, it feels, home is not a place you can go to or come from, not physically nor in time.

Home is a state of being. It is where you, sustained by external conditions, can connect to something bigger, vaster than yourself.

It is your essence.

So how do you find it?

You can't.

When conditions are right, home makes itself known.