Home (n): A feeling of belonging

“One important aspect of it was his willingness to accept that many questions may be unresolved even with our best efforts, and our answers may remain incomplete.”
– Home in the World by Amartya Sen

I never have a simple answer to a question. Whether it is a straightforward question about my favourite colour or an abstruse question about the kafkaesque nature of the US healthcare system, I will always have a complex answer backed up by several layers of back stories. Of course there will be a segue into why I think what I think, which will eventually lead to me explaining how growing up in a traditional brown household that I rebelled against constantly shaped my world view, and finally why all this information was necessary to contextualise my response (Context is very important people!).

Perhaps, in my twenty-something years of life, the question I have struggled to answer the most is, where is home for me. It is easy to answer where you were born or where you live for these are but factual questions. But often times, the place where you were born or the place where you live does not quite feel like home. Because, the word “home” itself has a profound meaning.

Home is not simply a physical place but a feeling. It is a keen to the calmness you feel when you are sitting by the window ledge on a rainy day with a warm cup of tea in your hands. It is like the joy that takes over you when you are running into the arms of your best friend whom you have not seen in awhile. It is like the comfort of waking up next to the person you love on a lovely spring day. It is the familiarity of an old favourite book, the safe space of shared secrets, the sigh of relief after a long, tiring day. And often times, it is the people who make you feel that way.

When I first felt all of that, when i first felt like I was home, I was eight thousand two hundred and fourteen miles a way from the place I had known to be home. I was in snow covered rural Vermont with my found family, away from the scrutiny of the aunties who have no business poking their noses in to your life, away from the judgements of the relatives who don’t even know your middle name but somehow believe they have the best advice for you. Away from the burden of expectations, the pressure to be someone I am not, the pressure to fit in, I finally felt like I had control over my life. I felt free to experiment, to rediscover myself, to allow myself to make mistakes and rectify, I felt secure enough to be me. But I was also away from the familiarity of the childhood house I grew up in, far away from my dad’s study where we spent hours sampling music, away from my mum’s fish curries that filled the air with a rich aroma, I was away from the familiar feeling of certainty. I felt at home and homesick at the same time.

One thing I have realised over the last couple of years is that, as we evolve and change with time, so does our definition of home. It becomes more complex. We require more and multiple places become home but no one place fulfils all our needs and somewhere along the line we make peace with the trade-offs. And for people like us, hopping from country to country chasing our dreams, living in a new place every six-eight months, home is everywhere and nowhere at all.

Hi, guys! This was not supposed to be the first blog post on this page. I was fully in the middle of writing a different one but changed my mind half way through because this felt more time appropriate. Lately, I have been moving places a lot and have had this lingering feeling of being unsettled. That is what inspired this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it. And welcome to the blog! Stay tuned for a book review on “The Lost Apothecary” and “The How-to Guide: Moving into College”.

— Arzoo.

About the author

Hi, guys! This was not supposed to be the first blog post on this page. I was fully in the middle of writing a different one but changed my mind half way through because this felt more time appropriate. Lately, I have been moving places a lot and have had this lingering feeling of being unsettled. That is what inspired this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it. And welcome to the blog! Stay tuned for a book review on “The Lost Apothecary” and “The How-to Guide: Moving into College”.