Home is a word without a definite meaning.  An individual may be able to define what it means to them but as I have found out the concept of home is not necessarily an easy one to grasp.  In the twenty-seven years I have been alive, there have been many places I referred to as my home.  Home in a physical sense could be a building, a location, a place, even the womb in a way could be defined as a home.  There is also home as a feeling.  This feeling could be comfort or serenity but could also be emotions with negative connections.  Home can also be a combination of physical and psychological.  It is also important to differentiate between house and home.  Many would argue that the physicality of home is the house but in my experience this is not always the case.

Having grown up and having stayed put in the same place for the first decade or so of my life, my concept of home was quite strong and unchanging.  It was the only home I had ever had and it represented comfort as well as a base for which to always return.  I grew up on the outskirts of a village, Naramata, in British Columbia’s interior.  Free time was spent exploring the orchards and gullies that surrounded my home.  I was comfortable there.  At the age of twelve I left that comfort for suburban Metro Vancouver, a landscape foreign to me at that time.  Despite the sudden change I was quite happy to move to the city yet I don’t know, looking back now, that I ever came to think of it as home.  Over the next few years I would change houses a number of times, sometimes living in cramped condos, and never really feeling connected to the places, physical places, I was living.

Image: Courtesy of Kettle Valley Rail Trail

Over time I began to feel disconnected with the culture and society that surrounded me.  I had friends and family and I did have some connections but as a whole I did not feel like Metro Vancouver was my home.  Realizing that something needed to be done I upped and left and moved to Japan.

Things of course were very different there and I never would have expected to feel more comfortable in this foreign nation than in the one I was born in but I did.  Whatever feeling of home I had abandoned in my first home, the village in rural British Columbia, had returned.  I was happy again and felt a connection not felt for more than a decade.  So how do I explain this?

As I mentioned before, home is not just a place but a combination of the physical and psychological that surrounds an individual and makes them feel comfort and security and safety.  Home is a state of mind.  Home does not have to be the place you live and home for many people may cease to exist for periods of time.  Natania Rosenfeld, in her story, What is Home?, talks about this search for a place to call home (Rosenfeld, 3).  Rosenfeld goes on to say that home is a place of internal and external comfort and acceptance, a theory I connected with.

For me, I believe that my disconnection with society resulted in my feeling of psychological homelessness, if you will.  It took a drastic change of scene for me to revive that feeling of being home.  And it really was a relief to have that feeling again.  Being back in Metro Vancouver I feel a sense of homesickness. The only other time I have felt such a feeling is when I reminisce about my time spent growing up in Naramata.  I am not sure if the feeling of home I encounter in Japan is the same feeling as the one I felt living in rural BC but it is as close a feeling as I have felt since.

I wonder, for those of you who have lived in multiple countries, if you can relate to any of the abstract things I have stated above.  Please leave your comments!

Thanks for reading 🙂

Sources:

Rosenfeld, Natania. “What is Home?” Southwest Review98.1 (2013): 45. Web.