About Home

By addinaf - 4:01:00 AM


I have a lot of things that come up in my mind exactly right now. It's only 8PM, and I just finished my dinner with some typical breakfast food, yes, I did that often. I ate honey-pancakes and a cup of hot-honey-tea. Today was a tiring day. It is probably just me who mumbling about stuff that I believed some of you, even more, need to carry heavier problems.

Do you somehow, at some points, miss home?

This question really hit me hard this morning. Also, my group project's topic is also related to the family that is apart. Meaning that you are living away from each other, with distance and time differences. That is me. Me in this last year, I suppose. But, I don't know if you would count 2 years before I moved to Milan too. In total, I already living apart with my family more or less 3 years. 

When she asked me, I was like; Yes. Kind of.
But we have no time to go further because she needs to go to the other classroom.

It makes me question myself in this kind of cold night.
Nowadays, what is home, actually?

I did a lot of research (for university's project) related to home, feeling of home, or the facts that people tend to be nomad other than settled people. I will not talk about millennials because somehow that word is overrated. But, let's say, us. Do you really prefer to stay where, in the place you born, raised, for the whole of your life?

People want to travel, by travel, I would prefer to experience, because travel makes you go back to your 'house,' but experience gives you options and possibilities to choose. I need to prove that I travel, not so much, but I've been to a lot of places. But, am I experienced in those places? Because for me, traveling is something that is on the surface of the experience. You did the experience but on the surface. I would say that I never 'traveled' to Jakarta, but I experienced Jakarta (in a really short, and probably not really good way).

But that was the experience that leads me to decide whether I want to stay there, or not. No?
That leads me to another possible question. Is it possible, if a home is a place where you experienced?

Even if you assume home as a 'person' or 'people,' we could say that home is a person/people you experienced with. That could be a good point. These assumptions somehow can answer the question, no? That doesn't mean I forgot my family, or my home country, or Indonesian food, and stuffs back home. But the thing is, now, this is my home, they are my home until I finish, and let's see the possibilities afterward.

All of these familiar people, familiar places, familiar streets, familiar activities, and usual kinds of stuff. I can't say that I experienced only the best things here, so that, I can feel at home. Both good or bad things will create the definition of your home, anyway. There is no perfect thing in this cruel world. I can't be a negative person who always complaining about missing home the whole my courses, otherwise, why did you choose this in the first place? 

By the time you decided that you want to leave and find 'experience', that is exactly the time when you need to open your heart to a new 'home'. Afterall, you can feel home, wherever and whenever you want.

It depends on how you manage yourself, no?
Do you, at some points, feel home, wherever you are now?



Addina Faizai
Milan, Autumn 2017

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