Home.
What is the definition of home?
What comes into the category of home?
Probably the place where your loved ones are, the ones who stay by you even when you are at your worst. The place where unconditional love is found.
One such place is you childhood home, the place where you grow up.
I recently had a wave of nostalgia when I visited my home, the place where I spent my childhood. Where my school was. My school is still there, but it has changed. The building is same, the people have changed. I don't recognise any face there anymore. That made me sad. No semblance of familiarity remained. The teachers were different. I know my teachers moved to bigger and better schools and I know where a few of them are but that I would never see them again with a familiar blackboard behind them made me feel that something is missing. That part of my life, of me, is gone and all that's left behind is memories. Some memories I wince from, but would never trade anything to forget them.
My city has changed too. Big roads, big malls. It has always been changing, progressing, but it never felt so stark when I lived there. Things change, sometimes so much so that it is difficult to compare them to what they used to be. My favorite ice cream shop shut down, and my friend who used to live right across from it moved to some other place, got married, had kids (she is much older than me). So many new restaurants and eateries opened up that I lost track. What used to be a single road with a railway line obstructing it's functioning every now and then, has given way to a flyover with cars zooming through it.
My point here is, things change, and keep changing whether you witness them or not. There is change everywhere, even in us. We keep evolving, that is why people change. Transience is the very nature of life. Trying to grab on to things and trying to keep them that way is futile. Beautiful moments are etched in memory and are beautiful because they cannot be repeated. You find friendships in life and you lose them, because you evolve differently. No two people can evolve the same. If you want to hold on to people you have to embrace the change. And sometimes, letting go is best.
You will find no person or place the same as you left them, that is why the concept of home is so abstract. It raises the issue, if everything is changing, home will also change. Yes, the people who make your home will change, they will evolve, but so will you, and if the bond is worth it, your home will embrace you and make you a part of their life.
The day I left home, I stopped being the constant presence, the people left behind fell into a pattern which functioned without me. They didn't need me yet they needed me. They could live without me, but I constituted their home just as they constituted mine. So when I go back, I feel like a misfit in perfect harmony. Because all of us have changed, but somehow we all align perfectly to make the jigsaw complete.
I guess home is, where you depend on people by choice. Where you trust people completely and where you are always a part of each other's evolution. Where geography doesn't tear you apart. And where it is not a-phone-call-a-day kind of commitment but the I-got-your-back kind of commitment. As someone very wise once said, "Home is where the heart is".
What is the definition of home?
What comes into the category of home?
Probably the place where your loved ones are, the ones who stay by you even when you are at your worst. The place where unconditional love is found.
One such place is you childhood home, the place where you grow up.
I recently had a wave of nostalgia when I visited my home, the place where I spent my childhood. Where my school was. My school is still there, but it has changed. The building is same, the people have changed. I don't recognise any face there anymore. That made me sad. No semblance of familiarity remained. The teachers were different. I know my teachers moved to bigger and better schools and I know where a few of them are but that I would never see them again with a familiar blackboard behind them made me feel that something is missing. That part of my life, of me, is gone and all that's left behind is memories. Some memories I wince from, but would never trade anything to forget them.
My city has changed too. Big roads, big malls. It has always been changing, progressing, but it never felt so stark when I lived there. Things change, sometimes so much so that it is difficult to compare them to what they used to be. My favorite ice cream shop shut down, and my friend who used to live right across from it moved to some other place, got married, had kids (she is much older than me). So many new restaurants and eateries opened up that I lost track. What used to be a single road with a railway line obstructing it's functioning every now and then, has given way to a flyover with cars zooming through it.
My point here is, things change, and keep changing whether you witness them or not. There is change everywhere, even in us. We keep evolving, that is why people change. Transience is the very nature of life. Trying to grab on to things and trying to keep them that way is futile. Beautiful moments are etched in memory and are beautiful because they cannot be repeated. You find friendships in life and you lose them, because you evolve differently. No two people can evolve the same. If you want to hold on to people you have to embrace the change. And sometimes, letting go is best.
You will find no person or place the same as you left them, that is why the concept of home is so abstract. It raises the issue, if everything is changing, home will also change. Yes, the people who make your home will change, they will evolve, but so will you, and if the bond is worth it, your home will embrace you and make you a part of their life.
The day I left home, I stopped being the constant presence, the people left behind fell into a pattern which functioned without me. They didn't need me yet they needed me. They could live without me, but I constituted their home just as they constituted mine. So when I go back, I feel like a misfit in perfect harmony. Because all of us have changed, but somehow we all align perfectly to make the jigsaw complete.
I guess home is, where you depend on people by choice. Where you trust people completely and where you are always a part of each other's evolution. Where geography doesn't tear you apart. And where it is not a-phone-call-a-day kind of commitment but the I-got-your-back kind of commitment. As someone very wise once said, "Home is where the heart is".
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