What do we
mean by Home:
With half
the world’s population apparently in search of a new homeland, the question
arises as to what qualities or lifestyle a human being seeks in finding a place
they may call home.
Naturally most people consider home the place or country in
which they were born as home, their motherland or fatherland as the case may
be. Over the centuries peoples have travelled far and wide the search of some
illusive quality they consider desirable. Historically it would be fair to
claim most moved either for economic reasons [overcrowding,. better hunting or
cultivation of crops, forced removal, ] and so on would cover most of the
popular reasons for leaving your birth place for the unknown.
How applicable are all these reasons in the international
world of the 21st cent., were we are witnessing the redistribution
of ethnic or religious groups on an unprecedented scale.
Although it could be claimed that the relocation of an
individual is less stressful than say a family group, the heartache is often the
same. Moving in today’s world is often associated with conflict and
assimilation not always assured.
To return to individuals on a more personal level, the meaning
of home has different meanings. There are different words to describe this
state, homelessness, homesickness, exile, alien are simply a few. To be
homeless is self-explanatory to live on the street needs no explanation, but to
be homeless may also mean stateless that to some extent means the same thing,
you have nowhere to go.
Homesickness is entirely a different proposition, it presumes
you have left your birth place for some reason, economic, adventure, or it
just seemed a good idea at the time to go to some foreign or distant location,
a place that does not qualify as the village down the road, somewhere exotic the unknown.
One of the strange conditions about homesickness is that there is often a reoccurring desire to return “home” in later life. This is particularly
noticeable here in Australia were some 40% of the population are foreign born.
You would imagine that regular visit to their homeland would quell this thirst
for home, but this assumes that “home” remains the same, which of course it
doesn’t.
Over the years I have spoken to many migrants who after
living here in Australia for many years still don’t feel fully at home here.
Sometimes due to cultural customs, the landscape, language, lack of contact
with their stay at home relatives. Yet when they return home after years of absence, find
they no longer relate to their mother country in the same way as before. Often
due to new economic circumstances, migration or new political developments,
nothing unfortunately ever remains the same. Some migrants who have taught
their children their mother tongue find that their native language has moved on,
and their version has become rather dated in their mother country. To some
extent they have become stateless or citizens of the world belonging to no
country in particular.
I often feel much of the dissatisfaction in their lives is
due to this condition, that they no longer belong anywhere anymore. They belong to
no country that they can truly call home, in the true meaning of the word. All
of us set out on the adventure we call life without sufficient consideration of
the long term consequences of our decisions. To further complicate our desire
to belong somewhere there is the problem of marriage between different ethnic
groups, now some 30% of the population marry into different ethnic groups, creating a new people a refinement that
appears to focus immigrants on their new country, their new homeland as this is
now the mother of your new life.
