Coming back home

Home. It’s both a place and an idea. A place to come back to after a long day at work or a fun travel. It’s also an idea that symbolizes returning to one’s true self or the place one truly belongs and be comfortable at.

Today I had a conversation with a co-worker about our dogs. When talking about my dog, I had an epiphany and blurted out “Dog is home!”. Dog embodies the idea and ideal of home indeed. I felt like I’m onto something and tonight I wanted to write about other concepts or things that embodies coming back home.

• Toy Story: someone’s pithy summary of the movie goes, “Two toys must work together to return to their home”.
• The Wizard of Oz: “There’s no place like home”. Enough said.
• Baseball: The whole point of the game is to go around all based and come back home safely.
• Homer’s Odyssey: Throughout the whole story, Ulysses experiences unbelievable and spectacular adventures, but the goal was to come back home safely.

Seems like this story arc of leaving one’s home to go out in the wild to go through trials and tribulations and come back home as a different person is ingrained in our cultural subconsciousness.

What about my home? I left the country I’m originally from (even had to denounce the citizenship since they don’t acknowledge dual citizenship) and I’m living happily in California. I always jokingly say I’ll die Californian since it’s my new identity and I’m happy living in California.

I feel like I came too far away to go back to my home country. I can’t return to the past, the era, place and self I left behind. Does it mean that my home is lost?

Well, as long as my dog is there, that’s my home and I’ll abide.