“Return to Home Base!”

How do you return to home base in your world? It never occurred to me to ask myself this question until last week. Playing laser tag.  Seriously.

I’ve spent the last month away from the wet winter of my homeland here in Oregon. I decided to leave the travel blogging to others and to simply absorb the colores and sabores (colors and flavors) of the small colonial city I just visited.  I walked and simply marveled at beauty, color, and hospitality. My heart expanded when I noticed each kindness, from taxi drivers to expatriates.

The first day I was home a friend had a laser tag birthday party.   I have a general policy of trying anything that doesn’t have obvious addictive properties at least once.  So I went.  I can’t say that I ever mastered the strategies that others seemed to automatically grok, like who to avoid and who to hit.   But I heard one phrase again and again: Return to Home Base! In the game, this signal indicates that you’ve taken all the allowable hits or used up your stored power. Every time I heard the little box on my belly telling me to return to home base,  I kept thinking that there was nothing I’d rather do.  I started loving the simplicity of this game.  You give others your power and get depleted.  Then you hear a voice that tells you to return to Home Base.  Such simplicity.

So once the party was over I followed the directions.  I returned to my base for some serious re-charging.  It’s taken a little longer than in laser tag,  where a laser beam magically lights up your center.  But I notice that it’s the ultimate kindness I’m extending to myself to slow it down, gaze at the wall. Sleep. Return to yoga classes, walk in the mist, pet the dog.  Home. Home base.