Todays topic is especially reaching out to Big City residents who left their childhood places in hope for….,yeah for what exactly ?

Though the German word “Heimat” finds no translation, the feeling is Universal

Often people living in big Cities tend to come from far away. They left their “Heimat” (homeland) in order to realize a dream, and so did I.
Though the German word “Heimat” finds no translation, the feeling is Universal.
The need for it loomes the closer you are and you miss it the most while living in the distance.
One refers to it as a place, the others refer to it as a feeling, a vanishing memory of ones roots.
No matter what the word might be translated into, it yet has a common meaning in all of us.
The only thing that differs: one cannot be sure about if home is only a place or an individual memory, the smell of your Mamas food or your inner circle of people you were surrounded by, while starting your once so innocent life. You can find home in an attitude, for example the conservative paradigm your grandparents gave you, such as it can be the Hippie spirit of your elder siblings.
Heimat can be the whole country or it can be only one friend.
Or is the word “Heimat” only a cliché that helps us to define ourselves ?

It can be the small Village up to the North, the farmhouse on the countryside, big houses, small appartments, a project building, the bourgeois Wilheminian style. It can be a Trailorpark or a tent.
A social background that forms your empathy and beliefs. It can be the desert, or a wood, but wherever one might be born into, it is meant to be our headquarter of familiarity.

Home is an afterglow of safe and sound childhood memories and rebellious teenage years.
Even people who consider them self not having good childhood memories, yet had their spiritual home in times of grief. At least you will always find the most secure shelter in your inner truth and if its up to me, also accompanied with a good German beer.
When I was a child in my lower Saxony provincial Town, I always used to chill on my terrace and dreamt of the life in the big illuminated Bradshaw City.

From Braunschweig to Bradshaw
I fulfilled my childhood dream and I made from Braunschweig to Berlin and inbetween years, I also made it to „Bradshaw“.
By the time living in New York, I had intense 5 minute conversations with people in a Coffeshop or even on the subway. I was able to lose my “German” honesty and suddenly I loved the superficial small talk world. Life was like an elevator pitch for a while. Know yourself pitch yourself.
Result: We are able to go through every kind of challenge as long as we know Ourselves by then.
Thank goddess I had my terrace and no Internet, by the time I was an adolescent, plus time enough to visualize what options would wait outside if I would get there.

Home is the place where one knows oneself best; it is where one belongs, it is in oneself.
So let us continue to fulfill our childhood dreams and we easily carry our home wherever life might take us in the future.
I chose to leave my hometown 13 years ago. I still find my favorite beer every once in a while in my fridge and I see myself surrounded by mostly the same people I started my lifetime journey with: Grandmas attitude, Hippie Siblings, Mamas food, reliable Homegirls and Homeboys….and so on.
They are mostly next door or next to ones heart.

Go offline, call them! Happy end.

Der Beitrag „Heimat“ erschien zuerst auf Urban Appetizer.