Home is…
Home is a feeling and you carry it with you
When you think of home, what comes to your mind?
Do you picture the place you live currently? Or do you envision the house you grew up in, or maybe where your family lives now?
But, what makes that place a home?
You might think of that place as home because of the memories you’ve made there with the family you started or grew up with. Or it might be because it is the place where you are most comfortable and can relax and be yourself.
But, why THAT home? What makes that particular building on that particular street so special?
To me, and I think many fellow travelers, the answer is: nothing.
That building (read: that house you pictured) may have many beautiful things about it that you particularly like. It probably also has many fond memories there — maybe even a lifetime of them — but the building isn’t “home.”
If it was a building that constituted a “home,” what do those who live without four walls and a roof think of as home? In Myanmar, the temples served as much as homes as did the thatched lean-tos constructed hastily on the banks of the river. In South Africa, I met families who called the bush home; they didn’t understand why we would want to live inside when the world outside was so beautiful.
When you travel enough, home becomes more of a feeling or an idea. You may idolize your “home” country or maybe you feel like you no longer have a home. To me, “home” comes with you wherever you go.
My husband pointed out to me the first time we traveled together that I would say things like, “let’s go home.” And not once did I mean when we get home to the country and place we live. I meant, well, the place we were living that night — the place we were staying. No, it did not matter that we would only be staying there a few nights. That rented room was home to me.
He didn’t understand how “home” could be something so temporary to me. But, home isn’t temporary to me; home is ever-present.
Home is ever-present
Home is wherever I feel comfortable and safe — and that is usually wherever I happen to be staying, but sometimes I don’t even need that much. When I’m with someone I trust or someone I love, home can just as easily be the floor of the Tahiti airport as it can be a camel hair mattress in the middle of the Sahara or the family home I grew up in. Because to me, home is never about four walls and a foundation. It isn’t a building or a yard or a neighborhood. Home is about the people, the memories, the comfort, and the connection to a place.
When traveling around the world with no “home” in sight for months, it was more important than ever to create a new “home.” The ship that carried us safely from our houses and around the world stopping at dozens of ports along the way, quickly became that home for us. The ship was safe, comfortable, and where we could come back to. But it wasn’t until a group of us took off on an over-land adventure (where the ship moves ports and you make your own way from one port to the next) that we realized just how important our home on the ship had become to us.
Finding Home
Our first international port on the voyage was in Japan and we had the option of over-land travel; we would depart the ship at the port of Yokohama and catch up to it in the port of Kobe in 5 days. I’m always ready for a new experience so I knew I wanted to make that journey — despite having no itinerary, no transportation, no place to stay, only paper maps, and not speaking the language. If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, now my travel companions and I were going to need to rely on each other and trust each other — but we had all only known each other for a couple of weeks.
Our journey started out rough with the hotel we had all agreed to meet at (*remember, we didn’t have phones!), didn’t exist. The guidebook on our ship had been wrong about the name of the building and the address — no such place existed according to any map or any person who patiently spoke to us through the translation operator. But, we didn’t give up on our new companions.
Miraculously, we found each other.
Then, we explored Tokyo but couldn’t afford to stay at a hotel. So, we rented couches in a Japanese internet/gaming cafe; it wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was a place to at least get a little bit of sleep. Our home for the night.
Our next home was an overnight bus to Kyoto where we walked for miles exploring the beautiful city. As dusk fell, we still had no place to stay. Finally, we stumbled across a ryokan that had some availability — somehow those tatami mats were the most comfortable bed in the world. Maybe it was just a relief to have somewhere that felt like a home to sleep in.
After days of walking, riding overnight buses, getting lost on the bullet train and metro system, staying in a cramped Japanese internet cafe and a beautiful ryokan, finally arriving at the next port and seeing the ship come into view was one of the most comforting feelings I have ever experienced. I was finally home.
Home can even be a place you imagine and create for yourself. Maybe you envision a “home” you want for yourself sometime in the future. It isn’t just a single place; your vision comes with a feeling. That vision may include a family or be the picture of your hard work building your dream. Whatever the case, the “home” isn’t just the building — it’s the feeling surrounding it.
I know that the sense of “home” I felt coming back to the ship for the first time in Kobe, Japan, has come with me in a new form: the friends I made on that journey. Whenever I’m feeling uncomfortable and out of place, I can call on those friends and instantly, I’m home again. It doesn’t matter if I meet those friends in the tiny town of Nelson, New Zealand, in the middle of summer in Pheonix, U.S.A., or even virtually during a pandemic — being with them is my “home.”
I will fully admit I’ve traveled to my fair share of places that didn’t feel like “home.” Then, home becomes my traveling companion(s) and the connections I forge during my journey.
At the same time, I’ve felt more “at home” in many places than I have in my own country or even in my own house— which is sometimes because coming home isn’t always easy. But carrying home with you can be.
Home is a feeling. You can be at home at a friend’s house, your childhood home, or at a hostel on the other side of the world with your new friends. Home is wherever you make it.
Leana’s an avid world traveler who has been to over 40 countries and will be venturing to her 7th continent in 2022. She believes in ubuntu and that adventures make life worth living. To follow her journey as a plus-sized woman with unquenchable wanderlust as she continues to seek out all that the world has to offer, you can check out The Overweight Adventurer.
