Instinct

The homing instinct is powerful, even for human beings. The holidays bring up all the deep instinctual feelings about our places of origin. Some of those feelings make our minds happy; others are best left aside.

 

I lost my homing instincts nearly 50 years ago. As I became aware of my intrinsic homosexuality as an adolescent, I knew my home was not a safe place for me to be. I realized at that early age that I would have to be my own home, my own sanctuary in a hostile heterosexual world.

 

This morning I found that my nemesis, a skunk who has a homing fixation on the area under my porch, had once again penetrated my elaborate defenses against his burrowing. Skunkie, as I have dubbed my striped and odoriferous Moriarty, has amazed me with his persistence. The power of animal instinct motivates him to do Herculean digs around and under my barricades.

 

For those humans who find a painless and euphoric home in drugs, this instinct motivates similar persistence and risky behavior. For those humans who find their home in some other compulsive behavior, anxiety taps into the instinct to survive. This is tidal, irresistible, for many. They require professional help to overcome the drive.

 

We are all like Skunkie in a way. We want to find that safe place to rest from life's demands. Unlike Skunkie, I have a frontal lobe and opposable thumbs which enable me to turn the key in the door to an internal or concrete home of my choice. Part of my adult practice has entailed developing a deep sense of home within my own being. This has sustained me through considerable stress, even the stress of finding that Skunkie has once again burrowed past my defenses.