The Quest for Home

 

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  Saskia van Ommeren-Egberts Ms. Gardner st

Honors English 10 1   20 May 2014 The Quest for Home Tom: Laura blew out her candles; I was incapable of blowing out mine. Oh my, oh my, oh my, Saint Louis was gone — as as well as my home — leaving leaving Laura to be comforted by Mother. The world of adventure was inviting and with a warehouse job — I needed to search, like my father, for a new light. I wanted to get away, I tried to get rid of family to find adventure, but I just left, left, aimlessly looking for anything anything to call home. I remember Laura often. I travel, from here on, finding my own light in the dark after losing, yes, Laura. What am I without family? How does one move o on n from leaving everything they knew? But I knew adventure, and I moved on. I figured out how to live, how to live despite Mother, despite Laura, despite Father, all being gone. I looked forward to leaving this crazy home, going in search of another. And I went! Oh — how how I have found companions, how I have found a home of adventure, how I have found my dreams. Without Mother and Laura, I found my m y own music, I saw my own light, I blew out my candles, but I also left Laura. Pip: Unimportant —I  —I felt common because I was just a blacksmith’s boy. To b bee a gentleman, proud and polite, I had to leave the marsh. Admittedly, I was conscious of the fact that I came from the commons, common s, that I knew Joe — who who was common, but that I would no longer be average, as Estella described me. I would become a sufficient young gentleman. Whenever I walked away from Joe and to my new home, there were no tears

 

 

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left in me, but whenever I left London and my gentleman lifestyle, embarrassment about Joe and my past proved to me that the marshes were no longer lon ger home; that the marshes couldn’t define me as a coarse common boy. Biddy boy. Biddy taught me my m y first manners on how to be educated; I used to strive to be like Joe; Biddy and Joe could no longer be identified with me. All that was necessary was that I left; my m y benefactor came, and I became a gentleman. No more Joe. No more embarrassment from the under educated. I live now knowing that Joe deserved care that I had the potential to provide, and that I didn’t give  give  it. The marshes and the forge are only a reminder of who I was before I left home. The forge is just a pocket in my memory, memor y, and London was and is a home for my identity. identit y. Siddhartha: Enlightenment has always been my ultimate achievement. Sacrifice, loss, pain, unity, beauty — they they disappear when one reaches Nirvana, but it is essential  before finding Nirvana. My first step forward forward on the enlightenment path was overcoming my father, leaving, to follow myself   — O yes, trust in my knowledge of Nirvana — and and committing to the divine. The march to the Samanas spiritually drove me to study the art of Samanas better than that of even the eldest Samana. Siddhartha’s spiritual quench was not stopped after teachings, so Atman lead him to follow the quest of the independent learner. Where was enlightenment? Where could one uncover Self? Why did the Buddha, O holy man, find enlightenment, yet I could not? Over and ov over, er, I established homes, to learn Atman, to learn spiritually, to learn Self, but Siddhartha S iddhartha had to get away from luxurious learning’s and teaching. Since Govinda left, and because Kamala distracted myself, I, Siddhartha, was lost. Distractions were locations — homes homes — that that needed to be evacuated and stripped down to reveal the beauty in the world. Appreciation was lost in these places. Only when Siddhartha emanated Om from within did he find Self. Self,

 

 

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learned from a river, provided a home ho me for Siddhartha, and I learned always from the river, which was from there on out my home.