Published: 2024-02-16T21:35:28+00:00
Home is a place. Home is a feeling. Home is more than one place. Home is where you live currently. Home is where you came from. Home is where your parents or family are. Home is something we can concretely point to, yet also something transient and elusive.
As someone who's lived in 3 countries, home is a VERY transient concept. I call many places home. Some I prefer to call home more than others. Is home the place I've lived the longest? Is it the place I have the strongest connection to? Or is it where my family is? The problem, for me, is that I'm not sure that is where home actually is. We live in a transient situation, in a rental which we cannot stay for much longer. It's too expensive. Everything feels like an "in-between."
I return often to the place I think of as home. But it feels weirdly emptier each time I go there. Is it a sign that I am finally moving on? That a new place is becoming "home?" But then the old place feels less empty, and the new place more empty. And then it doesn't. Rinse, repeat. I am still stuck in the In-Between. Both physically and metaphorically. This in-between place is the place where two (or more!) choices dangle in front of you, and they continue to hang there, just out of sight, sometimes with fleeting glances in the periphery of your vision.
In this In-Between, you can spend time either running TO the choices, or running AWAY from them. I have been running away from them for a long time, but eventually, they will always catch up to you. And that's happening to me now. Eventually, circumstances of life force one to make a choice.
The future brings what it brings. We eventually have to make the choice we've been running to or from. Once we make the choice, we have to live with the consequences. They could be good, or bad, or a mix. But what if we have the problem of not wanting to accept any of the consequences or the choices we have before us?
I have to make a decision where to live, soon, and I'm not sure what the best answer is. Many different potential futures will spawn from this one choice, and there are a mixture of good and bad consequences in each choice, at least that I can easily perceive. There's also plenty of unforeseen developments that will result depending on the choice I make. Thinking about this choice and making it a cause of existential dread.
But nevertheless, in the end, the choice must be made. Any number of ways of analyzing the choice can be done. Greatest amount of self-happiness? Greatest amount of net happiness? Purely pragmatic factors like finances or education? All of these factors are important, but also maintain a careful balancing act with emotion and sentiment. In the end, I think home is what we make of ourselves and our situation. The word still can have many meanings, but it is up to us to define what the word means for us, in the current part of our lives. The meaning of "Home" likely changes throughout the decades of our existence.
The only constant is change.
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