We're on vacation, the desired holidays
in our home country, back home. Fortunately we managed to come to Brazil every
year since we plunged into the overseas adventure ...
It's so nice being back! I feel I come
to recharge batteries, find the inspiration to return and face the many
challenges of my nomadic life. Back to see the family, the places where we lived
for so many years! I love to buy country products, here, where they have a
special taste and the right appearance of being in their real context! I spend the year dreaming about these back to
origins days, where I can be myself without any kind of embarrassment, where I
am not afraid to seek the unknown, where I can talk without fear of making
mistakes... I feel 100% confident in these visits home!
Home? Is it still home? Where do we belong, anyway? Where is our home? Will we, the 5 family
members, get to name the same place as "home"? After all these years living outside Brazil, experiencing
so many different countries, where do we belong? What is the true weight of
citizenship in our subjective identification?
To be honest, I love coming back,
longing for that feeling of confidence and security that seizes me whenever I step
into my country. I
am Brazilian, no doubt! Heart and soul! But, my home is not here anymore... I
am a Brazilian foreigner, visiting homeland. I come on vacation to my country but
I’m on the run. I'm not from here anymore... I love coming back - however, I'm
glad to know I have some other place waiting for me. I'm relaxed (secretly
glad) on going back to my comfort zone, which is in another place and is always
changing... It‘s so strange, so very hard to admit! Home is where I live most
of the year with my husband and my children. Home is where I live day to day
with the joys and sorrows common to all life. Yes, home is where I have my life
as a whole... wherever part of the world that is. The feeling of calm and
tranquility, comfort and familiarity I feel at home... where I live… very far
away from here...
How wise is life! How many "lessons"! And how many rounds I did
to realize it... The place is important no more: ceases to be the moment we
begin the effort to adapt to new cultures, new places, and new ways of being.
We all changed and there is no "going
back" because even if we return one day to Brazil, we accumulated
experience that makes us different from those who never left and which we cannot
and will not erase. If we do go back we’ll have to do a new adaptation effort,
who knows if even more awkward and difficult... Living the crazy expatriation adventure
in more than one country forces the family to open up to the outside, but
simultaneously to close under the protective shell of its own identity. Home is
no longer a physical space, because that is always changing; home are we,
individuals, those remaining (the 5). And this home now belongs to the world,
no longer fits in a country; even if as big as Brazil... borders lost its
significance ...
This revelation has to be well kept: How
would my family and my old time friends ever understand? How to forgive this “betrayal”? How to grasp with the
fact there’s no room for me here as all of them followed on with their lives
and I feel they are different and further away… I understand this and plainly accept
it. I still keep them preciously saved in a corner of my heart: not replacing
them... just broadening the horizon. They are my roots, my foundations. I just
continued to grow, adding more pillars. And they, what will they do with me? Is
the feeling mutual?
Carolina
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário