When the World is a Home

A month ago, home was Yale. It was my friends, my studies, my room, my life. A week ago, home was in Rochester, MI. It was where I grew up, my family, and nostalgia. A day ago, home was a small hostel in Taipei, a comic book store down the street, other travelers' lives wrapping around me like a breeze. Tomorrow, home will be an apartment outside of NTU, unknown people, and unknown conquests. "Home" in my life has become fluid in a comfortable, dynamic way because of traveling.

In a memorable quote from the movie Garden State, the two main characters discuss this idea called "home":

Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

When I first saw this movie, Andrew made sense. What I've learned in the years since is that you can create your own home for yourself through traveling and opening yourself up to new cultures and situations. Traveling and learning help you understand, appreciate, and as a result become comfortable with all types of people and places. In doing so you create an identity for yourself as a citizen of the world.

You give meaning and the sense of home to where you live. It happens through a personal relevance to the people, the language, the culture, the location of the home. No matter how many dogs people throw in, or how many doormats people buy in an attempt to create a home, it can't happen without a sense of personal relevance or meaningful belonging to that "place where you put your shit". Traveling creates a sense of relevance to all of these things, and creates a feeling that is why I love traveling and studying abroad so much - this feeling that the world is your home.

- - - - - -Because in Taiwan, McDonalds delivers.- - - - - -