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Homesickness

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Afternoon in Naples - Cezanne“A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.”

Carl Jung

In the final part of my brief series on the subject of home-sickness posted in the run up to Christmas last year I concluded that the malaise to which I had briefly fallen prey that November had been caused in the main by feelings of a loss of significance – a lack of purpose – and of the concomitant confusion concerning my place in the world. I further opined that the topic of ‘significance’ was itself… er… significant and that I would needs return to it in some future disquisition.

Now seems as good a time as any so to do.

As noted in the aforementioned post my emigration to Canada was not the only important event with which I was occupied last summer. I had also reached the end a forty year career in education. I consider myself to have been massively fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in two of the UK’s leading public schools (public in the English sense here) and I felt toward the end that in my primary career in IT (primary in the sense that it was that for which I was most highly rewarded) I had gone about as far as I could go. I had acquired something of a reputation amongst those peers whose opinions I most respected and had little need to prove myself further.

The English public school is an ancient and complex beast – particularly those amongst their number that focus on boarding. These institutions have fashioned an uniquely self-contained and multi-layered culture which incorporates not only the academic, the sporting and the artistic, but also their own individual ethos and mythology. Some go so far as to insinuate into the English language their own vocabulary.

Those who work for these august bodies can choose to hold themselves aloof from such aeon-aged Weltanschauung – or they can cheerfully subscribe thereto. It will surprise no-one that I opted for the latter course, throwing myself into as much of School life as was feasible for one who lived several hours’ drive hence.

I was also for a decade a resident (being joined there in ‘mid-term’ by the Kickass Canada Girl) of a small village in South Buckinghamshire – the sort of rural idyll in which everyone knows everyone else’s business in rather too much detail. I by no means ranked amongst the luminaries (and there were a fair few of them!) but most of them knew who I was.

I served the village for a number of years as secretary to its cricket club. To those for whom the notion of ‘village cricket’ stirs thoughts of amiable amateurishness – or perhaps summons up images redolent of bucolic quaintness – I should point out that within the appellation itself the words ‘village’ and ‘cricket’ get equal billing. Whatever the standard of the play and the good nature and friendliness of the participants, membership of such a club does expose one to all of the pressures and pomposities attendant to rural politics and personalities.

This whole slightly convoluted explication is by way of an illustration as to how the structures that I had (mostly) sub-consciously adopted to support my life in the UK had successfully furnished me with a sense of belonging – a sense of purpose. I knew my place. Nothing out of the ordinary in that, of course… we all do pretty much the same. Reaching the end of a working life can, however, lead to a dislocation from this sense of place as, of course, does moving to a strange country. Doing both at the same time virtually guarantees it and having to start afresh to rediscover one’s sense of worth from scratch can be intimidating. In my case one of the side-effects was my brief bout of home-sickness.

As might be determined from those pre-Christmas posts my response to the malaise was to indulge – as is ever my wont – in a little navel-gazing. Interestingly the topics to which I have alluded above were not the ones that featured most strongly in the resultant retrospection.

Those that were – however – must wait for next time.

 

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Image from PixabayThis is the final epistle in a trilogy of posts concerning homesickness – particularly as it affected this recently retired immigrant (albeit an imperceptible one!) from the UK to the Pacific Northwest. The first two parts – should you wish to consult them – are easy to locate, but for those who prefer to follow links rather than navigation can be found here and here.

Though the end result may be pretty much the same, feelings of homesickness can come in many different guises. The ever helpful InterWebNet offers much useful guidance to aid the identification of the causes and thus assist reasonably rapid recovery. I found these discovered items – presented in no particular order – to be useful:

This article on gritandglamour.com – entitled ‘Getting over Homesickness‘ – draws attention to the parallels between homesickness and the grieving process.

“The brain on homesickness is much like the brain on grief—the stages and emotions are remarkably similar, and that makes sense. You are, after all, mourning the death of your former existence to a large degree.”

The article also contains a useful set of links to other related resources.

The importance of allowing oneself to grieve those things that have been lost is also the theme of an article entitled ‘One thing no HR Manager will ever tell you when re-locating‘ on a website called medibroker.com. Of course, the need to grieve that which has been lost is not by any means exclusive to expats – it is an essential skill that we must all needs acquire – but emigration can bring a number of such losses into focus at the same time.

I also found this article – ‘Homesickness isn’t really about Home‘ by Derrick Ho on the CNN website – to be most helpful.

“It (homesickness) stems from our instinctive need for love, protection and security — feelings and qualities usually associated with home, said Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Alabama’s School of Public Health. When these qualities aren’t present in a new environment, we begin to long for them — and hence home. “You’re not literally just missing your house. You’re missing what’s normal, what is routine, the larger sense of social space, because those are the things that help us survive,” Klapow said.”

This was particularly apt in my case since I wasn’t just missing the sights snd sounds of home. Though I do – of course – miss friends and family, at this point in our lives our get-togethers and gatherings have in any case become rather few and far between. Also, although I do love my mother country fiercely the end of November does not present it at its best and such ‘delights’ as are to be found at that time are not the stuff on which I dream when I fantasise about its bosky beauties. My brief bout of homesickness clearly had other causes.

It did not take much soul-searching to identify what these causes might be. As the gentle reader is doubtless aware I am not just a recent immigrant – I am also a recently retired immigrant. To the other losses with which I have had to come to terms on moving to a new country must be added those associated with reaching the end of my working life. Such include the loss of the status that paid employ provides – the loss of a sense of structure to my life – the loss of a regular routine… in fact one might go so far as to suggest the loss of a sense of purpose.

I have spent much of the past few years telling anyone who would listen that I had no fears concerning retirement. I was eagerly anticipating being able to devote most of my time to artistic and creative endeavours once I no longer had to endure the daily trudge to and from London.

It is still very much my intention that this will be the case, but it seems that I underestimated the extent to which the opportunities that my previous working existence provided enabled me to exercise my creative muscle. Teaching drama at the School – directing plays there and at my previous school – availing myself of an outlet for my play-writing and composition… all of these will take some replacing and I duly mourn their passing.

The key element in this particular round of homesickness was thus mostly to do with the feeling of a loss of ‘significance‘. That is in itself a big topic which will require further examination – and which will in turn lead to further discourse on this forum.

That is – however – quite enough for now…

 

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Image frim PixabayIn my last post – with reference to my recent minor bout of homesickness – I mentioned that my first instinct was to fire up the InterWebNet to do some research. This turns out to have been a smart move and one that I would definitely recommend to others who find themselves in a similar state.

Here’s why:

The first thing that the sufferer will learn is that he or she is not alone. Not by a long chalk! Indeed, it is really quite startling – until one really thinks about it – quite how much web-based material there is on the subject. This boon provides assistance in a number of ways:

  • It is always comforting to discover that the unexpectedly painful emotions that you are suffering are in fact really very common. They won’t necessarily hurt less for being so but it can help considerably to feel less alone in your discomfort.
  • Where there are numbers there is social interaction. The InterWebNet abounds with fora to which you can add your voice and on which you can recount your experience. This will quite likely engender a sympathetic response from others who have ‘been there – suffered that’.
  • There is much useful information online both as to the nature of homesickness, and regarding helpful hints for mitigating the effects thereof. Not surprisingly, doing some research into the nature of homesickness does indeed itself prove to be one of the useful strategies for coping.
  • The number of blogs addressing the issue of homesickness is illustrative of yet another coping stategy – that of recording your emotional turmoil as a way of ‘taming the beast’ – as it were…

…which is – after all – exactly what I am doing here.

The InterWebNet provides further assistance. Its use as a communication tool – by means of emails, social media, Skype, messaging and so forth – as well as in providing resources such as Steetview or websites to enable one to virtually revisit the ‘motherland’, means that we now have at our fingertips unprecedented power to mitigate the agonies of much missed people and places. No – it’s not the same as actually being there, but goodness knows how previous generations managed without these amazing tools.

For me the most useful thing was discovering more about the nature of the beast itself. I am not going to give you a complete guided tour of the resources available online as you can easily make a list to your own specification using Google (or an alternative search engine of your choice). I am going to reference a couple of thoughts that I discovered that were particularly relevant in my case.

In the interests of keeping things in handily bite-sized chunks, however, I will once again flow over into yet another post…

 

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Image from Wikimedia CommonsLooking back at the postings made over the getting on for four years that I have now been scribbling on this blog it is not difficult to detect some broad trends therein. One such is that the missives penned during the run up to the Christmas season each year tend to exhibit a certain world-weariness – sometimes almost bordering on actual desperation.

The posts themselves document the reasons for this dark tone, chief amongst which being – from my time in education – the exhaustion that is so often the end result of the duration and intensity of the autumn term as practiced in the English Public School. Mention is also made of a secondary cause – the general sense of melancholy and ennui that, for me, seem always to be engendered by the ultimate months of the year.

Given that I am now retired and living in beautiful British Columbia I would have hoped that this year my experience of the period might be somewhat different. It is certainly the case that I am sleeping well again, that I have lost a little weight and that – as a now regular attendee of a twice weekly weights class at the local leisure facility (Fabulous Over-50s!) – I am probably fitter than I have been for some years. It is therefore quite sad to have to report that my mood over the past week or so has been really quite disappointing.

There is a reason for this bad humour. A reason that explains why these postings have made no reference at all over the past month to putative renovations around the house. A reason that cannot just yet be made public knowledge, but that which – sadly somewhat inevitably – involves the legal profession.

I will naturally clarify all just as soon as I am able so to do. In the meantime we find ourselves in an unexpected hiatus. This has left us ample time to brood instead of getting on with the planning of, and the preparation for, domestic renewal… and brooding is never a good thing.

In my case it led to a fortunately brief but really quite aggressive bout of homesickness. I had been expecting this at some point, but it still took me unawares. My natural response to such things is to fire up the InterWebNet and to do some research on the matter. That – of course – means that I intend writing a brief(ish) missive on the subject…

…but that must wait for a subsequent post.

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