Taelyr C. Roberts

Part of freshman year curriculum at my institution includes a number of management and liberal arts courses. In one particular liberal arts course however, one of the main topics is about a word of German origin- heimat. The word has no literal English translation because it is as much a word as a culture. The closest representation defines it as  “denoting the relationship of a human being towards a certain spatial social unit. The term forms a contrast to social alienation and usually carries positive connotations”. My professor’s most simplistic variation is that it means home. As a freshman I HATED that word. It was the bane of my existence and the number of jokes that were made around the extremely frequent use of that word among my friend group could fill an entire comedic stand up tour across several cities. My professor would always encourage us to define it as best we could (to no avail of course since there is no English translation), but even now as a junior in college I sit at a desk watching people walk by and wonder how they identify home. This word still haunts me daily. I have never been fond of the unknown or unseen and as a result this word bothers me or at least it used to.

I have never stopped attempting to define this word in some way, shape or form because I felt that it simply MUST have a translation, but early last week I think that I genuinely felt heimat. I still doubt that I can define it indefinitely, but I think home is as close to an accurate depiction as I am going to get. My professor in all of her glorious wisdom never said that it was a physical place, but me in all of my 18 year old naiveté read ‘home=location’. My interactions in this life have brought me to the conclusion that home does not exist as a place. A physical spatial unit can offer you feelings of security or comfort, but if you have to move or if that place burns down or whatever external factors are imposed upon that place and remove it from your ability to be fully present within it, then how can that truly be home? What if you never really had a physical location to call ‘home’ in the first place, then what do you get? How do you ever experience that feeling? I know that that feeling is possible regardless of whether or not it exists as place. I know this because I have never truly found home in a physical area, but I have come to reason that heimat at least is found in people. The peace or the joy or the attachment of home does not truly come with the structural aspects of a physical location, but with the memories formed in that space, the people who had roles or moments that you shared that you look upon with fondness. I know that this is a pretty strange concept and most of you will probably think I am insane, but that is okay. I’ve learned to be comfortable with myself and my thoughts too, but that is a completely different post.

Lastly, I would argue that in order to find home in any regard, you must first find home within yourself. I understand that may seem philosophically charged and somewhat far fetched as well, but I would argue that if you are unable to recognize the concept of home, then you can’t seek it elsewhere. I guess it is akin to the theory and concept of love which in my opinion rightfully makes sense if the prerequisite for home is love and if the prerequisite for home is love then couldn’t it be possible that home is found in people? Honestly, I don’t know and these are personally just my thoughts and ramblings, but coping in this world has proven to be an uphill climb and I find a heck of a lot more peace in the realization that a sense of heimat won’t cost me a $700 plane ticket. 

Yours in Earthly exploration and heimat discovery,

Taelyr C. Roberts