Homesick

So I'll lose some sales

and my boss won't be happy,

but there's only one thing on my mind.

Searching boxes underneath the counter

on a chance that on a tape I'd find

a song for

someone who needs somewhere

to long for.

Homesick

cause I no longer know

where home is.

from "Homesick" by Kings of Convenience

Nowadays I often wonder what it is that makes a place a home. Is it the memories? The people? The books in the bookshelves? The pictures on the walls? The walls who have heard and seen so much? Or maybe the cheesy one - home is where the heart is?

My childhood home has recently been sold, my grandparents' house will soon be sold and pulled down, and I have moved away. Sometimes, when I think about it, I feel that I don't have a physical anchor in the world. Like a place which I can come back to and which doesn't change too much. But, I guess, that is too much to ask of life. I am a control freak. I don't particularly like change, to put it that way. I usually stick to activities, people and places. But life is always in motion, and change is natural. I'm not saying that the change itself is necessarily natural, but the fact that things change is thoroughly natural.

Geranium bohemicum
Literally grows from tragedy

Today, in the biology lecture, we learnt about succession in nature. The directional change of an area's environment, for example a forest growing back after a fire. Change happens in a certain direction until it reaches a final or equilibrium state. But even then, it fluctuates. So change is extremely normal everywhere. Even disturbances such as flooding or forest fire are normal. If the equivalent happened in our lives, we would say it was a disaster or a catastrophe or tragic, but some organisms rely on these disasters to survive. Maybe I and many others could learn from this. We could choose to focus on the good things that spring from the hard times and tragedies, like the beautiful geranium 'Orchid Blue', which has seeds that only flower after a forest fire (or high temperatures). It literally grows from disaster. So instead of being sad about the recent fire, we can marvel at the beauty that sprouts after tragedy has struck.

Change is inevitable and natural. And as someone once said - it's not about how you are, but about how you take it (it sounds better in Norwegian...I'm not that good at translating). And in a way, all our lives are built around change and changes. We grow up, we become older, we experience new things, we change in response to other people, and other people change in response to us. We live in a dynamic world, but still some of us (for example me) manage to get stuck in a fantasy that stability is the most natural thing and change is something strange and something to be feared. I think a good idea is to meet the change and be proactive when approaching it, instead of hiding in the shadows and wishing it would go away. And oh, how I wish I would follow my own advice.

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