HOME AWAY FROM HOME FRUZSI GÁL Home. One of those few magical words that strikes a chord in almost everyone who reads or hears it – like love, like freedom, like happiness. One of those rare words that, without a need for dictionary definitions, pulls at a different string in each one of us. When you think of home, what comes to mind instinctively – a house, a town, or an ordinary sunset-lit alleyway covered in vines? A specific person, or a group of people that share something primal, something exclusive with you? Memories? Or a state of being? Whatever it may be, the word is merely a vessel – besides what it refers to, it has no function. What makes it so hard to pin it down, to cut open and to explore and understand every tiny fibre of it, is the fact that it is so transparent. So intangible. So abstract. How can we talk of the significance of a word that has so many different meanings to so many different individuals? The idea of a home is universal – but is one understanding better than the other?
it’s about the journey? Whether that is referring to travelling, relationships, or life in general, this argument proves to be a doubleedged sword – while what you learn and what shapes you along the way are undoubtedly important to personal development, it is only by stopping, by arriving, and by looking back that we can really comprehend just what the journey was all about. It is by arriving home that we have time to process it all. But what is home? If you ask a lover, home is in the safety of an embrace, in the
Wherever we go and whoever’s hand we hold, home is within ourselves...
How many times have we heard that it’s not about the destination,
Home away from home
familiarity of sounds and smells and movement, in the curve of a smile and the feel of skin. If you ask a refugee, home is where family is, where safety is, where life is. If you ask an immigrant, home splits into two – home is what you know and home is what you’re trying to know. If you ask a realist, home is made up of walls and doors and structures. If you ask a romantic, home is made up of sunshine spilling on old leather couches and the warm smell of cinnamon on Christmas Eve. Home is where you’re understood and what you understand at the same time. To try and put a finger on the definition of home is meaningless, because we all know what it is, instinctively. So which definition of the word is worth investing in? Partners leave, people come and go, houses can be sold or destroyed. Change, progress, movement are all a very natural part of life, and so emotional investment in these things – while in most cases still very much invaluable – can end unhappily. Once your childhood house has been sold, is it still home? Once you’ve moved to a different country, after how long do you ‘go back’ and not ‘go home’?