There is something about toothpaste which I haven’t quite fathomed. For several years I was intimately acquainted with a German woman living in England. She had lived in other European countries and had long since stopped thinking of herself as particularly German. As a result she lived very much in the style of the local people. In fact she only clung to two things from her native country: One was a strange (but tasty) practice concerning biscuit making for Christmas; the other was a particular brand of toothpaste. There were always several tubes of this alien toothpaste in the cupboard. If stocks began to run low then an emergency aid parcel would be sure to arrive in the post.

I used to regard this toothpaste fidelity as rather odd until I realised that I had exactly the same addiction to my favourite brand. So when I came travelling to India, I made sure that I brought a particularly large tube of toothpaste with me. However, even that huge tube was eventually exhausted. I had to face that terrible fate of buying and using a different toothpaste. For three days I “forgot” or only remembered at inopportune moments. For three days I was trying ever more desperately to squeeze some dregs from the empty tube.

But those three days were an initiation – the “toothpaste initiation” as I now think of it. During those three days my mind was coming to terms with the fact that it was not just on holiday; that the experience of this unusual land in which it finds itself is not just a brief escape from the “normal.” The mind was letting go of the feeling of there being a home somewhere far away. And that step into homelessness is what, for me, differentiates travelling from going on holiday.

Like any change, the mind resists that step into the void of having no fixed abode. Yet when it is forced there – by the emptying of the toothpaste tube – there comes a great feeling of liberation. And then a miracle happens: In the spaciousness of that liberation it becomes clear that everywhere is home.

So, my friends, do not fear the emptying of the great toothpaste tube of life. Rather, look forward to striding out, as I did after those three dark days had passed, with a new lightness in the being, rejoicing in the possibilities for rich, new, exotic toothpaste experiences.

(March 2005)