GftNC - Home is not "wherever we are," though being able to feel at home wherever you are is a gift.
I have lived in Seattle since the mid-1970s (aside from a few years interregnum when I had to go back to Florida), and have been in my current house for nearly 30 years. I agree with you whole-heartedly that the thought of moving is fairly horrifying.
OTOH, if I ever do have to relocate, I hope I have the grit and spirit to make an adventure out of it.
2025-09-23 15:58:08
I wonder if I'm a born nomad, because I have no sense of an ancestral "home." I've lived in different parts of the country and liked or disliked them for what I found there, not for any larger ethnic or familial attachments.
The yearning for a "true homeland" has been at the foundation of many wars, pogroms, dispossessions, and conquests - either by an entity out to capture the homeland, or the former inhabitants thereof trying to reclaim it.
In dramas where conflict is central to the plot, there is often a scene where the main character loses a loved one - a sibling, usually - to that conflict. And thereafter the main character burns with a special rage for vengeance. I've always considered this either bad plotting, a form of "fridging" or - if it does happen in real life - sheer lunacy. It's a WAR, you nitwit; one that you and your loved one willingly signed up to fight, or even instigated yourselves. People die in wars. Maybe if you didn't want to risk your loved one, you shouldn't have pushed for this battle, eh?
I kind of feel the same way about that yearning for an ancestral homeland. Maybe the way you lost it was horrific and unjust, but inflicting similar or worse damage on the people currently occupying it (who may not even be the same ones who drove your ancestors off) will only set up another cycle of dispossession-revenge-war. If it were as clearcut as getting rid of the usurpers and replacing them, that would be one thing. But it is seldom that clearcut.
The I/P horror is non clearcut beyond description, with claim to the same bit of land going back generations on one side, centuries on the other, possibly millenia on both sides. At what point do ancestral claims cease to be arguable? One generation? Ten? A thousand? At what point do past atrocities justify, or cease to justify, current and future ones?
Someone once said, "'Home' is where you bury your bone." I've always liked that.
Home is where you make it. Wherever you find yourself, you can bury your bone there.
GftNC - Home is not "wherever we are," though being able to feel at home wherever you are is a gift.
I have lived in Seattle since the mid-1970s (aside from a few years interregnum when I had to go back to Florida), and have been in my current house for nearly 30 years. I agree with you whole-heartedly that the thought of moving is fairly horrifying.
OTOH, if I ever do have to relocate, I hope I have the grit and spirit to make an adventure out of it.
I wonder if I'm a born nomad, because I have no sense of an ancestral "home." I've lived in different parts of the country and liked or disliked them for what I found there, not for any larger ethnic or familial attachments.
The yearning for a "true homeland" has been at the foundation of many wars, pogroms, dispossessions, and conquests - either by an entity out to capture the homeland, or the former inhabitants thereof trying to reclaim it.
In dramas where conflict is central to the plot, there is often a scene where the main character loses a loved one - a sibling, usually - to that conflict. And thereafter the main character burns with a special rage for vengeance. I've always considered this either bad plotting, a form of "fridging" or - if it does happen in real life - sheer lunacy. It's a WAR, you nitwit; one that you and your loved one willingly signed up to fight, or even instigated yourselves. People die in wars. Maybe if you didn't want to risk your loved one, you shouldn't have pushed for this battle, eh?
I kind of feel the same way about that yearning for an ancestral homeland. Maybe the way you lost it was horrific and unjust, but inflicting similar or worse damage on the people currently occupying it (who may not even be the same ones who drove your ancestors off) will only set up another cycle of dispossession-revenge-war. If it were as clearcut as getting rid of the usurpers and replacing them, that would be one thing. But it is seldom that clearcut.
The I/P horror is non clearcut beyond description, with claim to the same bit of land going back generations on one side, centuries on the other, possibly millenia on both sides. At what point do ancestral claims cease to be arguable? One generation? Ten? A thousand? At what point do past atrocities justify, or cease to justify, current and future ones?
Someone once said, "'Home' is where you bury your bone." I've always liked that.
Home is where you make it. Wherever you find yourself, you can bury your bone there.