Said to me my last day of class at Tokai-Daigaku Fuzoku Daini Senior High School in Kumamoto, Japan during the summer of 2007, my homeroom teacher, Tachibana-sensei (On right), told me it was his favorite saying. The simple phrase helped me realize that I could actually never leave home, because home was wherever I went.I felt lost at the beginning of my stay in Japan; I left my home and everything I knew behind, including my heart. I believed I could not make myself at home in a foreign land immediately, that home is the result of timeless memories, experiences, and relationships having to develop over time in that specific location before becoming a home.
Hearing this proverb, I came to understand that the opposite of what I thought was actually true. I could be at home anywhere, because experiences, memories, and relationships do not make the home, the home makes them. The only tool needed to create a home is heart. The heart allows us to experience new things, create memories, and begin relationships. Where I was waiting for outside forces to create home, I was not able to look inside myself to create home. Home is within each of us, within our hearts. Wherever you go, your heart will always be at home.
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