What is Homesickness

At Eternity's Gate (Van Gogh)

Can we recall those moments, when we are reminded of home, in our time away? Though it doesn't happen at all time - neither do these thoughts come to us most of the time - when they do come to mind, we are filled with a feeling, which we call homesickness. But let's go further than this superficial view of homesickness, and delve deeper into an understanding of this feeling of longing and nostalgia.

The easiest way to start is to recall exactly when do we often feel homesick. Let me give a suggestion: it is more than often that we feel homesick when we face an uncertain future, in our time away from home. This is why homesickness comes at around the beginning, and the end of our 'travels', although it doesn't necessarily have to do so. 

In the beginnings of our 'journeys', we can feel homesick, if we are not sure how things will unfold for us in a foreign environment, when our routine at home is broken. However, as we familiarize with this new environment, we quickly 'settle down', and would soon forget to miss home.

Whereas at the ends of our 'journeys', as we become more and more aware of a definite ending to our time away from home, we can also feel homesick. These are the times when our current routine, the one we have gotten used to while being away from home, will again be broken, and although at these times we are about to go home, we can feel even more homesick.

But why must these be so? Well, let's first examine our idea of home. We usually define it as the physical place where we spent our childhood. We also regard those who live there, our parents, grandparents, siblings, pets as part of home. However, home can also be thought of as the mere idea of our past, that time and place from where we came from. 

So no wonder then that we feel homesick when our future is uncertain, as the idea of home, which is actually a thought about our past, can be more comforting, as it is more certain.

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Taking this further, we can think about how to remedy the sadness that often comes with homesickness. We can try calling home, or even make plans to return home. However, these are temporary fixes to the real problem that we may be facing, i.e an uncertain future. One way out may be to turn our anxiety into excitement, by actively making realistic plans for the future, and not to underestimate our ability to adapt to new environments, as we have been doing so, for many times already.