I’ve been wondering lately about the impact of home on us all. And I’m using the word in an all-encompassing sense here: the building—apartment, house, condo—whatever it is we call home. But I also mean the more transcendental sense of the word, i.e., what constitutes a home for us.
Homes are much in the news lately, what with the mortgage implosion. And the question talking heads natter about these past two weeks is two-pronged: How did those of us wishing to buy a place allow ourselves to be talked into a mortgage we couldn’t pay for? Beyond that, why did the loan companies and banks allow it to happen? The economic answer is an extremely complex one, but that’s not my meat today. I’m simply wondering at the phenomenon of home, at the near-mystical qualities we assign it.
The novel I’m writing has much to do with home. Germans and Soviets, as WWII loomed, thought enough of their homelands to die defending them. In researching the war prior to writing, I read a number of memoirs of these soldiers, and found that home was constantly on their minds. Home being family, friends, countryfolk. Also being a place with which to identify. But being away from it always seemed to create the darkest sense of void for these poor men and women.
If I were an argumentative soul, I’d ask why folks don’t simply pick up and move when someone wants their land? I’d ask why we in the U.S., perhaps people of all shapes, sizes and places find it so compelling to stay in one locale, to lay claim to it, raise families there and die there.
This question is particularly pertinent to me, because I grew up in a military family in the fifties and sixties. Our life was one of constant travel, meeting new people, living in exotic places. It had its rigors, but we looked forward to it.
Then, during the late sixties and early seventies, the world suddenly seemed awash with peripatetic people. One would see hippies walking the roads of Tibet, India, Morocco, anywhere the door was halfway ajar. The catchword of the time for these people was “one-worlders,” citizens, not of a nation or a city, but of the world.
Maybe these people were harbingers of something that won’t come to fruition for another hundred years, but they seemed to have shed the notion of home, of the specialness of place.
But as I blinked, the one-world music seemed to have stopped, everyone scrambling for a chair. Travel is expensive now, I realize, what with four-dollar gasoline, but “cocooning” had become a phenomenon before the petro-mongers ran us out of our cars, SUVs and trucks. We found we could experience the world vicariously, via cell phones, the Internet, cable TV, all fed by a network of little Sputniks beeping their way around the world. Still, I keep wondering why the draw to a place when our interests take us so far afield.
I haven’t given this as much thought as it deserves, but I think the urge to “place” has a lot to do with the most basic elements of the human experience. Familiarity seems at the emotional root of it. There’s something comforting, despite our innate restlessness, about a place we’re continually occupying. Everything else we might name—the people, the mountains or seashore, the weather—all these things seem to revolve about a desire for familiarity. In a more metaphysical (I hate that word, but it seems to work here) sense, I think what we’re all about is identity. For some reason, we find it had to define ourselves as individuals.
You know the joke: Who are you? I’m a doctor. No, that’s your profession. Who are you? I’m a husband and a father. No, those are relationships you maintain. Who are you? I’m a good person. No, you’re describing an acquired quality. Who are you? The insistent question goes on and on until the hapless interviewee gets irate or dunks her head in the punch bowl in order to get away from you. Still, the question’s hard to answer, isn’t it?
And because we find that question so hard to answer from an inner vector, we keep looking for the answer in outward ways. And place seems to be the constant draw. In the most primitive sense, we find protection in place. We find physical and emotional nourishment there. Being bound by our habits, we stay there, become nearly as rooted as trees and cabbage. Earth to earth, dust to dust, and all that.
Now today, millions of people world-wide are finding that sense of self threatened by the confoundingly dumb way our financial institutions have de-managed themselves. What will come of it? I’m the last person you should ask, but I choose to assume the financial world will right itself, mortgages will be made reasonable, people will wipe away their tears and sweat and continue living as they choose. But maybe—just maybe—we’ll allow this trauma to upset us to the point that we finally answer the hardest question, Who are you? If we can do that, then Nepal will be little different from Home, U.S.A.
I’ve been wondering lately about the impact of home on us all. And I’m using the word in an all-encompassing sense here: the building—apartment, house, condo—whatever it is we call home. But I also mean the more transcendental sense of the word, i.e., what constitutes a home for us.
Homes are much in the news lately, what with the mortgage implosion. And the question talking heads natter about these past two weeks is two-pronged: How did those of us wishing to buy a place allow ourselves to be talked into a mortgage we couldn’t pay for? Beyond that, why did the loan companies and banks allow it to happen? The economic answer is an extremely complex one, but that’s not my meat today. I’m simply wondering at the phenomenon of home, at the near-mystical qualities we assign it.
The novel I’m writing has much to do with home. Germans and Soviets, as WWII loomed, thought enough of their homelands to die defending them. In researching the war prior to writing, I read a number of memoirs of these soldiers, and found that home was constantly on their minds. Home being family, friends, countryfolk. Also being a place with which to identify. But being away from it always seemed to create the darkest sense of void for these poor men and women.
If I were an argumentative soul, I’d ask why folks don’t simply pick up and move when someone wants their land? I’d ask why we in the U.S., perhaps people of all shapes, sizes and places find it so compelling to stay in one locale, to lay claim to it, raise families there and die there.
This question is particularly pertinent to me, because I grew up in a military family in the fifties and sixties. Our life was one of constant travel, meeting new people, living in exotic places. It had its rigors, but we looked forward to it.
Then, during the late sixties and early seventies, the world suddenly seemed awash with peripatetic people. One would see hippies walking the roads of Tibet, India, Morocco, anywhere the door was halfway ajar. The catchword of the time for these people was “one-worlders,” citizens, not of a nation or a city, but of the world.
Maybe these people were harbingers of something that won’t come to fruition for another hundred years, but they seemed to have shed the notion of home, of the specialness of place.
But as I blinked, the one-world music seemed to have stopped, everyone scrambling for a chair. Travel is expensive now, I realize, what with four-dollar gasoline, but “cocooning” had become a phenomenon before the petro-mongers ran us out of our cars, SUVs and trucks. We found we could experience the world vicariously, via cell phones, the Internet, cable TV, all fed by a network of little Sputniks beeping their way around the world. Still, I keep wondering why the draw to a place when our interests take us so far afield.
I haven’t given this as much thought as it deserves, but I think the urge to “place” has a lot to do with the most basic elements of the human experience. Familiarity seems at the emotional root of it. There’s something comforting, despite our innate restlessness, about a place we’re continually occupying. Everything else we might name—the people, the mountains or seashore, the weather—all these things seem to revolve about a desire for familiarity. In a more metaphysical (I hate that word, but it seems to work here) sense, I think what we’re all about is identity. For some reason, we find it had to define ourselves as individuals.
You know the joke: Who are you? I’m a doctor. No, that’s your profession. Who are you? I’m a husband and a father. No, those are relationships you maintain. Who are you? I’m a good person. No, you’re describing an acquired quality. Who are you? The insistent question goes on and on until the hapless interviewee gets irate or dunks her head in the punch bowl in order to get away from you. Still, the question’s hard to answer, isn’t it?
And because we find that question so hard to answer from an inner vector, we keep looking for the answer in outward ways. And place seems to be the constant draw. In the most primitive sense, we find protection in place. We find physical and emotional nourishment there. Being bound by our habits, we stay there, become nearly as rooted as trees and cabbage. Earth to earth, dust to dust, and all that.
Now today, millions of people world-wide are finding that sense of self threatened by the confoundingly dumb way our financial institutions have de-managed themselves. What will come of it? I’m the last person you should ask, but I choose to assume the financial world will right itself, mortgages will be made reasonable, people will wipe away their tears and sweat and continue living as they choose. But maybe—just maybe—we’ll allow this trauma to upset us to the point that we finally answer the hardest question, Who are you? If we can do that, then Nepal will be little different from Home, U.S.A.
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