Do You Feel at Home Where You Live?
‘Do you feel at home where you live?’ will sound like a strange question to many of you, and to be honest, I’m not really sure where I’m going with this article, but a few thoughts crossed my mind sitting here having a beer.
I had a lovely childhood with loving parents and four great brothers to play with. I knew that money was an object, but at least in the Fifties and Sixties there was no expensive technology targeted at kids, and the advertising industry as a whole had not sunk to the depths of preying on them so savagely yet.
I felt at home with my parents and brothers and going to school, which I was good at. My grades were good, so I went to a university 150 miles away.
It was from that point on, that I felt that I no longer belonged. Then my mother died at 42, and the feeling of not-belonging increased. I travelled mainland Europe, and lived there for ten years, before returning to work for my Dad with my brothers. I did that for thirteen years, and I tried hard to fit in, but to be honest, my hometown had become just somewhere I had grown up… like a chick in an incubator.
I had no friends who had been anywhere; in fact, most of them were on their second spouse and I hadn’t even found my first one yet. I was into computers and none of my old school mates even knew what they were. I could talk about languages, computers, computer languages, the USSR, Europe and north Africa, but they barely knew where they were. That was the Eighties and Nineties.
Then our firm collapsed and my Dad died.
It was like a mooring breaking in a rough sea.
No job, no-one I could talk to on subjects that I found interesting and now three brothers who were struggling to support their own families.
Then a friend offered me the chance to go to Thailand, and I went.
I met my wife within three hours of arrival, and in a week, we will both be flying to Fuengirola, Spain to start a new life with the expats and Spaniards. My wife’s family have always been good to me in Thailand, but hand on heart, I cannot say that this has ever really been my home either.
So, in seven days, we will be heading for Spain and I know that I will not find a home as an expat there either. It is guaranteed. I know the Costa del Sol well and love it, but I don’t have the money to stay there for long. Anyway, my wife’s dream is to live in my hometown … and that takes me back to the beginning. I don’t feel at home there… or anywhere.
Perhaps, that could be extended to ‘on this planet’ – or is that too fanciful for you? It isn’t for me. I want to go home, but I don’t know where that is. Sometimes, I think that death will show the way.
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All the best.
Owen
Podcast: Do You Feel at Home Where You Live?
