Mon, 28 May 2012
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Most global travellers will have thought about ‘going home’ one day, even if they have decided to live abroad. But is repatriation tinged with a longing to belong, as much as moving abroad is tinged with a longing for a better life?For any global traveller, repatriation won’t be a new theme as it basically means ‘going home’. ‘Which is where?’ some of you might ask, with good reason.
Homeland: watery associations
We all have an idea of home, which could be tangible like the place you were born and brought up in, or a culture you have lived in--a sense of belonging which is more related to the people rather than the land. A documentary I watched recently--Water-The great mystery--suggests that memory is held through water, and we carry the blueprint of the water of our birthplace. As the narrator in the documentary says: “Modern science maintains that the water structure of each person’s body is identical to the structure of the water in the place where they were born, therefore our internal connection to the place of our birth is preserved throughout out life, and that means that the concept of homeland has not only a lofty poetical meaning but also a quite specific physical content.”
But whether this poetical feeling has physical or psychic roots, it still exists and is often felt as a deep longing or saudade, a word in Portuguese which gets close to describing this feeling.
Longing to belong
Of course you will always ‘miss’ something, from time to time; an occasional feeling that can suddenly creep up on you, or linger. Is this perpetual urge to travel an addiction to this feeling of ‘longing’, a way of escaping growing up or just a seeking out of an ancestral homeland—perhaps through the subliminal pull of an H2O molecule? It could just as easily be interpreted as a wish to embrace new cultures and broaden horizons (most people confess to this), or a vestigial instinct developed in the time of the hunters and gatherers when moving on to greener pastures made literal sense.
As veteran expat Elise Krentzel says upon finally heading ‘home’ to the US after living abroad for several years: “Having tried most of my life to belong, I finally found out what belonging really means. …. To be longing to belong has left me on the outside of what I sought. Now I am being. There is no longing. That is what fitting in means.”
So basically, the source of contentment is within you and you don’t really need to change country to find that.
But you decide to go home anyhow: read the following chapter Running away.
Expatica editor Natasha Gunn
Natasha, these articles are EXACTLY what I've been looking for. Struggling with the decision to return home, I love your research and the interviews you chose to write about. Great info, thank you!
Natasha, these articles are EXACTLY what I've been looking for. Struggling with the decision to return home, I love your research and the interviews you chose to write about. Great info, thank you!
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