Home is where the Heart is

You know you are back in Darwin when you return in the month of October! After the glorious autumn weather in the south of France and Spain, arriving back in Darwin can certainly bring on a meltdown, but then, there is no place like home and beautiful Darwin!

Travelling in new places can be exciting or unsettling, or a mixture of both. Being immersed in different landscapes, cultures, languages, food and people can be exhilarating or unnerving.

No matter what country or village you are in, it is home for some people and the place where they feel completely at ease. However, a visitor to this place may find it inviting or isolating, embracing or repulsive. It is interesting that we are a human family with common-ground of physical, social and emotional needs. So what is it that one person may feel at home in a particular place while another feels completely estranged?

It really is true that home is where the heart is and how much the heart desires to be in a particular place, whether that be because of loved ones who live there, or loved features about the place, or other reasons of the heart’s desire that have a person feel at home.

This seems to be true whether we are in a place we know so well or a place that is new to us. To feel at home in a place or in a situation depends on the way in which we embrace it and open our hearts to it. My recent visit to Kolkata had me initially feel somewhat repulsed by the enormous poverty.

After my initial reaction of shock, opening my heart to Kolkata and the people (with a little help from Mother Teresa’s inspiration and Mother House!), I began to feel at home and embrace the experience. On leaving Kolkata I experienced sadness to be leaving a place where I had come to feel quite at home, with a special feeling for the people. Home is not a building or a country; it is the welcome into the heart.

“It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home.” (Author Unknown).

To be at home and at ease among people or in places requires us to open our hearts to whomever we are with and wherever we find ourselves. The more we can open our hearts, the more at home we will feel wherever we are.