The Courage To Leave Home
Last Saturday, at a residents' get-together in my building, I noticed a quiet guy standing in a corner, with a faint smile on his face. Nikolas. I had seen him a few times in the lobby. He had recently moved from Greece and rented an apartment here. During the event, he told me about his new job. He was excited about it. He spoke about the city, the possibilities, the strange thrill of starting over somewhere unfamiliar. And then, almost casually, he mentioned what he missed. His family. The small rituals that probably never seemed particularly important when he was living among the people who had always been there. That stayed with me. because I realized something I had never really thought about before: You can be happy about where you are and still miss where you came from. We tend to imagine immigration as a journey from one country to another. But perhaps the more difficult journey is invisible. It is the journey of carrying one version of yourself into another life. Your fodd, your childhood jokes, the way your family celebrates a birthday. You carry hundreds of ordinary things that you never realised were part of what made a place feel like home. And suddenly, they are thousands of miles away. We sometimes talk about immigration in terms of numbers. Millions of people, thousands of miles. New countries, jobs, homes. But every number contains a person who has to make a decision. Should I leave? And perhaps an even harder one: What am I leaving behind? I thought about other people I had worked with, studied, eaten lunch, and occasionally joked with over the years, who came from places like India, France, Greece. I had known them. But perhaps I had never really considered the distance they hasd traveled to become part of my everyday life. That thought changed something for me. I found myself wondering what it must feel like to hear a song from childhood while living on another continent. Or to smell a dish your mother used to make. Or to see a photograph of a family gathering you cannot attend. We finished our conversation with a promise to have dinner together at our favorite restaurant. Perhaps because I now understand that I won't simply be having dinner with my neighbour. I will be sitting across the table from someone who has crossed a considerable distance to build a life here. And maybe that is the beauty of immigration. It gives the rest of us a chance to see our own world through someone else's eyes. The food we take for granted becomes soeone's connection to home. A festival becomes someone's memory. An accent becomes evidence of a life lived somewhere else. And a neighbour becomes a reminder that the world is much bigge than the few streets we call home. I began this piece thinking about the courage it takes to leave. But I think there is another kind of courage worth noticing. The courage to begin again while carrying the people you love with you. So tomorrow, when you meet someone whose accent, name, food or traditions are different from yours, perhaps you'll wonder about the story behind them. Not because you have to, but because there may be a whole world behind the person standing next to you in the elevator. And if someone came to mind while you were reading this, perhaps that is worth noticing too. Maybe they once left home. Maybe they welcomed you into theirs. Maye they simply made your life a litlle richer because their world became part of yours. Is there a person who has crossed a great distance to become a part of your life, and what impact have they had on you? Have a thoughtful weekend, Bob
Join the conversation