It was one of the last great ironies of the adventure that he chanced to be reading a particular book at such a fortuitous moment. The book was “A Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell, a book that famously inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars. Chapter 4 titled “The Crossing of the Return Threshold,” of Part 3 “The Return” has these opening paragraphs:

“The two worlds, the Divine and the Human, can be pictured as distinct from each other – different as life and death, as day and night. The hero adventured out of the land we know into darkness, there accomplishes his adventure or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless – and here is the great key to the understanding of myth and symbol – the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the Gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness…
How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand times, through the millennia of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. How render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark… How translate into terms of “yes” and “no” revelations that shatter into meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of opposites? How communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void?
Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if meanwhile some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the rope across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided.”

Thus I found myself reading these pages in the Dublin airport having just arrived from Munich, awaiting my flight back to the States after being away for over a year. Seven years prior I left Iraq for the second time, stopping in Munich before catching the last flight home.I couldn’t help feeling something had gone full circle in the seven years since. And so with inner expectations that I might miss home, I found myself at the US border clearance in Dublin surrounded by other Americans awaiting their departures to a place most of them probably called home:

I went to get some food prior to boarding; Standing in line, I can feel the presence of America; a crowd of poorly dressed and overweight people complaining through horrible American accents (one I regrettably share) about how fast the food is being served. I shudder at the thought of going home as the reality of it crashes down onto me. I desperately begin thinking of a future where imagination alone constructs the parameters of one’s home. I think about my level of French, if it’s any good, how fast I could reach fluency if I decided to move to France. I go through the other countries I’ve been to and those I have a desire to see; could I live in them; doing what; surly something? Is there a foreign woman I could marry to save me from this place?

I board the plane and chance to find myself next to an American gentleman. Unable to hold in my frustration I tell him, “I don’t want to go back to the States.” “Why?” he responds, “You don’t like it?” “No,” I reply. We start talking. It just so happens this man lived in Europe for seven years and moved back to the States in 2009. “ I know exactly what you’re going through,” he says; “I felt the same way when I came back; I still do, but you can’t escape it. It will always be home.”

These are comforting words, but I can’t help and think how none of this was ever about escape. There was nothing to escape from; the trials one must go through, experience, and reflect on, will follow one until the end. Nonetheless I find a bit of respite. I sink into my chair and let out one of those exhalations where the air exits in one loud smoldering tuft, as if the breath itself felt fatigued.

There is no doubt that I’ve come to know of certain characteristics of myself that are a result of the culture I was born into, characteristics that could be called ‘American.’ Amidst crowds of people from other culture and backgrounds one’s own set of attributes and impulses stand out like candle light in a dark room: I am eccentric and passionate; I say things like very delicious or very very delicious – At a gathering amongst both French and English, a French woman told me it’s correct to just say ‘delicious’ and not ‘very delicious.’ I replied that I often say something was ‘very’ or even ‘very very delicious’. An Englishman overheard the conversation and said, “Of course, you’re American.”

I have a sense of humor that can’t resist the possibility of a good laugh even when my sense of humor itself knows it’s a bad idea i.e. Hitler jokes.

I’m unreserved and unrepressed about my thoughts and feelings; an admirable quality I noticed in other Americans abroad. There is a problem of course in that most Americans, although comfortable with voicing an opinion, express views that are often uninformed and ignorant.

Perhaps these are to some extent “American,” perhaps not. Nonetheless, going home I think of possibility. I remind myself of the willingness and drive I have to leave, wander, and explore, and how such qualities will always give me the option to get up and leave when the lust for other worlds becomes too strong to put off, and where ‘home’ can mean more than just a particular culture one was born into.