When I first arrived in Thailand nearly 3 months ago I tweeted: it’s hard to be homesick when you don’t know where you call home. Bittersweet, I suppose. Since I was a kid I’ve moved around about every 3 years. My adult life has been a series of avoiding unpacking boxes because I knew I wasn’t going to stay wherever I was for long. I have never signed a yearlong lease. Deep down I knew I wouldn’t be in that apartment or house for more than a few months and then I’d be on the road again searching for something new, something surely more exciting.

In a recent conversation with my Mum I realized that I haven’t had a real bedroom, decorated and made the way I wanted it, since I was in high school. Home is where the heart is. Blah, blah, blah. You can say that quote as many times as you’d like, it doesn’t ring true until you start dissecting, understanding and believing it. As I study Buddhism and begin my journey down the path of meditation, I’m reading that happiness lies within wishing others to be happy and that by giving that to the world, that is where you find happiness. I haven’t bought into this concept just yet—but I also hear it takes time to accept this notion.

My heart has been pulled overseas, it’s been pulled east and west each time searching but I’m not sure I’ve ever known quite what I’ve been looking for. My heart is inside of me, and I think that that’s where home has to be—we must find happiness within ourselves, create a comfortable and happy body and mind in order to be happy and healthy.

I believe that happiness is finding love within yourself. This may be obvious and simple for some but this is something I have struggled with—part of me wonders if I came around the world in search of myself, in search of acceptance. I’ll teach kids on the side, but this journey may be for selfish reasons. I think that that might be okay.

Khoa Ko