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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Home Many years ago in England, I had occasion to visit my local pub with a friend named Richard. We had just sat down when Richard noticed someone he knew and called him over. They had not been talking long before I realized that they had known each other almost all their lives, from junior (elementary) school, in fact. Their conversation consisted mainly in catching up on the news from people they had known through their schooldays, all of whom still lived within a few miles of their original homes. All of a sudden, I felt rootless, adrift in a strange land and surrounded by strangers. I was in contact with no-one from my schooldays; I had email correspondence with a friend from university but even that was sporadic and subject to years of silence at times. Through Richard, I was seeing life as it is for most people: a community of friends who have grown together through the years, familiar faces in a familiar landscape. The first ten years of my life, I was in Cape Town, South Africa, and, when my family moved to Zimbabwe, all the friends from those years were lost to me. Through high school, I formed other friendships but most of these ended when we all went off to different universities or careers. The few friends that I had remaining were left behind when I moved to England, so that I found myself without a community of friends, alone in a way that is probably not normal to as social an animal as the human being. A feeling of desperate loneliness hit me in that pub as I listened to those two old friends talking. They did not know it, but they had something that was now forever barred to me. Yet the feeling did not last. To some extent at least, it was based upon a very idealistic view of a life that could not be mine. At first sight, it seemed that I was missing out on something comforting and secure but, on reflection, I realized that I had compensating experiences. I may not have known what it is to be part of a lifelong community, but I had friendships of shorter duration that were no less valid. And I had seen a bit more of life in other places, for whatever that is worth. In the end, it comes down to the meaning of "home". Richard may have been able to define the word as a combination of people and places, but I see now that "home" has much more to do with how we feel than with external things. Home is where we feel comfortable and secure, amongst those we love and who love us. The old saying is true: home is where the heart is. And, when we move, we take home with us. Modern life dictates that we move far more often than our parents or grandparents did. If we are to pursue a career, we must be prepared to move from one side of the country to the other. This is especially true in America, where corporations happily move their employees about as and when it suits the aims of the company. So we become people without roots and have to learn how to take home with us, relying increasingly on our family circle for comfort, rather than any wider community. We are complex creatures. It is hard to say whether this change in lifestyle will have good or bad effects on us. Perhaps it is merely a return to the nomadic existence that once was the lot of all humanity. Or it may be that we become something entirely new, a collection of interchangeable parts that can be assembled in any order to create society. It would be easy to take the old line of "Things ain't what they used to be"; that is always true, whether things be better or worse. I think that change is inevitable and we adapt and cope, even as we complain about it. So I am not against the increasing mobility of modern life; no doubt we lose some things through it but we also gain. It's just at times that a wave of homesickness might strike us; that, for a moment, we might be lost in memories of how things once were. Which brings to mind another old saying. You can't go home again. Word count: 734 |
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now I have to unglaze my eyes 
