And I think it’s that which most people feel right now - unsettled. Uprooted. I realize with people moving out and away from my life, our vivid globalized modern world seems to spin faster, creating an inherent homelessness. There are few people which have lived in the same place all their lives and it seems very peaceful and quiet to me, like you establish yourself in a steady environment without too much change altogether. What must it feel like not to be torn between different places, always missing someone? This nostalgic reminiscence on the one hand and then this longing for something-else, undefined, far out there. There are many advantages to being at home everywhere and nowhere, I acknowledge that. It creates a certain openness and curiosity, and it leaves you feeling that wherever you are, everyone is people like you and I and creating the possibility of being at home anywhere. It also adds to critically questioning your own cultural beliefs, norms and values. However, it leaves you homeless as well. In most countries, people at least have nationalist pride. They feel happy and proud to be of their country - and unless it includes the exclusion of others or devalue other countries, it seems somewhat healthy to me. Germans are not proud of their country. It seems, we live in a history of shadows that still hover over our present; and sometimes, I feel like that myself, haunted by the shadows of the past, living in a state of myself defined by these dark spots, unable to escape because this is me, this is who I am. We build our identities on what has formed us, our personal history, and often times, we don‘t feel like we fit into the landscape of our body and the politics of our minds.
Is it our postmodern quest for a selfhood marked by fluidity, for individuality, our religion of self-realization that actually unsettles us? We‘re taught to move beyond borders, even if these exist for a reason. I‘ve moved away from the meadows and the fences I‘ve grown up with, the dichotomies of good and evil, black and white. And I‘ve learnt that freedom can lie both within and outside of fences. Albeit, to actually have the discernment, the wisdom of which borders to keep and which fences to tear down is another skill that requires long practice.
I‘ve come to think after all this moving, after all the different places and apartments I‘ve lived in, they all leave a mark on you, a certain feeling, memory or smell in the vast rooms of your heart. You never really let go of a place. Like with a person, you can transform it in your imagination by witnessing the ongoing change there. You could also keep an idealized version of it within. I guess it‘s just the same thing as with a human being, you believe you know a place but it evades classification in its constant evolution and flux.
Why then is it that we long for a constant, a thread connecting past and present, future and all the ways we move through time and space? I‘d say that we were made for a constant place, however not as in the perfect home with the perfect garden in the ideal spot (although it is a dream many, including me, fancy - the ocean-view-home, the remote countryside house, etc.). Rather, we long for both eternity - which encompasses all spheres of time known to us, obviously -, and for a home; or more precisely - a place that enables us to feel entirely ourselves and loved, known and secure in. I agree with C.S. Lewis‘s conclusion that our hearts must have been made for a different place. I neither reject nor cling to the idea of paradise. Through all the images, paintings and popular culture it has become somewhat cliché, somewhat kitschy, and somewhat unreal. But I still believe in such a place, and I believe, it must be God‘s heart where we‘re most at home, his lungs where our breath came from, his hands that molded our shape, and his eyes that saw us before our creation, even before the beginning of (human) time and the laying of world‘s foundation. ~
tangentwithtanner
stormborns
