“So, where is home?”
It’s a question I didn’t used to like because I didn’t have an answer to it. Not that I have one now. Many people say that home is where you make it. But what exactly does that mean? How do you ‘make a home’?
9 years ago, during a trek in the Andes, I remember a conversation with my group that started the day we met with the typical question “where are you from?” and continued the next day when we got to our camp with the follow up “so what country do you feel you belong to?” I said “none” and was nicknamed “the girl without a country”. They found it sad to not really have a country because each of them could call one country their home. I wondered, was it bad feeling like I didn’t belong to one single country?
Sure, sometimes I craved the sense of belonging to a single place. But having two nationalities at birth and being raised in a third country, I understood very quickly that belonging would have to mean something different to me – one of the reasons I related so strongly to what Pico Iyer says in this video.
What did I imagine ‘belonging’ somewhere was like?
My fantasy of what it meant to belong somewhere was to have a place where you feel whole and connected…to people, nature, the ground and sky, the present moment…connected to everything. A place that can be buzzing with life and yet you feel completely still. A place where everything just makes sense. A place where you can simply be.
To my confusion, I found that kind of peace in several places. Moments on an island on Lake Titicaca, the jungle around Pucallpa, the salt lake in Uyuni, in Crystal Cove in Southern California, under pine trees in the South of France, in the mixture of history and funk in Barcelona (Spain), watching the sunrise on a flight from Boston to Reykjavik, being at the foot of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur or simply on walks through fields and forests.
Where is home?
So home, I realized, could not be a place but rather had to be a state of mind or a state of being. Home, as Pico Iyer says in the video above, is more like a “piece of soul”. In all those place I mentioned above, I felt home in:
moments of stillness where my body and soul could be one and feel connected to a larger whole – that stillness Iyer speaks of that “puts it [movement] into perspective”.
moments I shared with family and friends
moments I experienced in each place I visited and lived in and that became a part of who I am
So maybe ‘home’ is also about moments. It is a constantly evolving sense of connection and belonging that can’t be defined by borders on a map. Maybe home is just the big round ball we all live on and belonging means feeling connected to that ball in some way, shape or form?
Anyway, that’s my take on it today. Who knows what it might be tomorrow?
How about you? What does home mean to you?
via Dude, where is home? — Culture Shock Toolbox.
