Home, Heimat, and Belonging

I’ve recently relocated to the Hampstead area, and was enjoying the view from Parliament Hill, on a fine day, along with everybody else, dog walkers, couples, families. London’s skyline has changed that rapidly in the past decade. There must be an old copper plate up there, with the skyline engraved, and probably hopelessly out of date. I’ve always been fond of the Gherkin, as it was just being constructed when I came to London, and I had to pass there every day on my way to work. Still, the overwhelming sentiment that day was one of apprehension, and I believe it always has been when looking at London. I’ve been thinking about belonging and home quite a bit recently, no doubt due to my recent move. There is a German word, HEIMAT, difficult to translate really, even though it does mean home, but in a more all encompassing sense. It means your origins, but also where your heart is at home, where you feel you belong. That is why these days people cite several things and places as their Heimat, as I read in a recent study.

A number of my clients live abroad, or further afield in the UK, and travel to London for business or to see friends and family, and I’m always happy to welcome them back, however sporadically they may turn up, and maybe provide a bit of home for them, reminding them that they have a body, and how yummy and good it can feel, and that, at the same time, their body and spirit are part of a greater whole. Or I hope they do feel that. Maybe they just come back to see me again? Sarani, a bit changed, through experience, at a different place in her life; and so are they, their energy changed, having made new encounters, gained new insights, richer in experience, and life. So we meet again, the same – but different. Providing mirrors for each other, reflecting being, in the course of time. And maybe this series of encounters provides a strange continuity that feels like belonging, somehow, a bit anonymous, maybe even a bit wicked and adventurous, something they are not going to tell anybody about, their, and my, little secret? And mostly not part of their daily activities. I often marvel at how people have changed, and quiz them about it, and it fills me wonder and gratitude, and then the opposite, people come to see me again after two years, and the very same issues and questions are prevalent!

I have been a resident alien for almost two decades now, in three different countries, two continents, nothing special these days, and then, people just travel so much anyway it makes me dizzy. I love London, because there is a great number of people here just as crazy as me, with a similar outlook on life, and because I seem to have strong ties with rotten old Europe on the one hand, and yet only feel truly at home with a great mix of skin colours, ethnicities, languages and nationalities around me. It seems that change, or variety, have become the belonging, the home I need. Yet, I am romantic, and every time I go to Wiltshire and stay in the beautiful house of my teachers on a residential workshop, maybe sticking my head out of the window on a crisp autumn morning, haze lifting, crows flying as if alerted, all out of and into the same huge trees, unbelievably starry skies at night, I have a complicated thought: I had better not stay too much time here, else it would be impossible to leave… And then, of course, I’m German. Meine Heimat.

What makes a place home then? It’s always people, says one of my American clients. People make you feel at home. You develop attachment to their faces, ways and oddities, and even if you happen to dislike them profoundly, you still feel attached. Take the Thames near Canary Wharf. Immediately, a lot of situations come to my mind, happy and not so happy days, sunshine and rain, and yes, friends and beloveds. Now, Victoria station? I have never managed to make friends with that one, even though it’s so very London, and imposing. Not enough loved ones to connect it with? I remember traveling through a place in South-East London, where I used to live for several years, quite important years of my life, and feeling absolutely nothing. How frightening! Were these years obliterated from my life? Did they not count, with zero emotional attachment to the surroundings? More frightening even, one day, looking back on today, will this time count? Do I develop attachments? Do I commit? Invest emotionally? Do I make sense? Live my purpose?

It seems that meaning is the other Heimat people tend to quote. Something that defines them, gives them their purpose. In this sense, you make your own home, with the help of others, because it seems to be the very task humans face, to make sense in their lives. This finding or seeing sense comes in stages. At any stage of our lives we are blissfully unaware of the bigger picture. We THINK we know. And then our path trails off, maybe we move to another country, or face other major changes, and need to start again, in a different way, and we don’t know why. It just does not make sense any more. And then, by-and-by, it does again. I’ve done a lot of coaching lately, and it seems the very thing that people need to hear is that they are ALLOWED to get stuck, or to be in a crisis, or to be ill at times. It’s part of human nature. It’s the way we are made. Ease, and dis-ease, all in time. Having a crisis does not mean they got all wrong, are on the wrong path, have been barking up the wrong tree. In fact, it is a sign of health! We need to ALLOW ourselves to be down in the dumps at times. It HAS to be like that, else we wouldn’t change and develop, and, by-and-by, follow our paths. We can’t KNOW our paths until we walk them. Only then they start to reveal themselves. Think back of your life, particularly at a time of crisis, say, loss of a loved one. How you thought the world would end. And then, it didn’t, and maybe a most marvellous encounter turned your life around.

Here is where either religion or spirituality comes in. It seems we need to trust that it will all make sense in the end, or, in other words, that the universe is a good universe, and that we have incarnated and live in this world for a reason.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but if there is no plan, no purpose, there really is not much point in trusting. I trust I’m gonna die one day? And on the way there all kinds of arbitrary things are being thrown at me, if I’m lucky, they are good, if not, well, bad luck, mate?

The other thing to trust in and feel is that we do not need to live out of our own endeavor alone. We can trust that the forces of life will always be there, flowing through us, that energy and life-force itself, connection to Source will always be present, unless we choose to blot it out, via fear/muscle tensions and desire to take control. We choose to disconnect. Times of crisis are frequently times of surrender to Source. These days, reading Psalm 23 makes me cry, because I can feel the same. Trusting in the face of change, even though I often can’t see where exactly it’s going, and why. I know I will one day. I trust I’m being led the right way. I cry out of gratitude, and awe, looking back on my life. I could not have known, nor have done it, all by myself.

The last and whackiest aspect of Heimat, are we really truly human alone, of and from this planet? Or have we incarnated into the human realm from very different realms? In times of crisis, longing for a very different and metaphysical kind of Heimat can arise. See what you make of the poem underneath, a good friend of mine wrote it recently, flat-searching in London, just like me.

May all beings find their Heimat, and feel it! May you all feel at home, loved and protected! May we all find our purpose, and meaning in life…

Love and namaste, Sarani Premanjali

Moving House

Changing platforms

for the umpteenth time

because I can’t remember

if I need to go East

or West

A thought pops into my head:

Why don’t you just go Home?

I am confused

yet I know

Home is not where I used to live

nor where I live now

Home would be incredibly easy

to get to

just a few stops

along the line

and no changing

At Finchley Road

or Baker Street

I know

they would all be there

Waiting for me

My real mother

Real father

Siblings

I can hear their clear voices

ringing in my ear

Dear beloved faces

warming my heart

with tenderness

My real soul mate

who has never met

his darling wife

my real children

lovely son and dearest daughter.

And yet

I carry on

pretending

to live somewhere

to make sense

to have a life

and things to do

along with everybody else

in the long winding tunnels

on the draughty stairs

deep under ground.

That woman on Kings Road

Late at night

on the bench

staring out

another night sleeping rough ahead

Sitting

like an Earth Goddess

Beyond illusion

Waiting

for the call.

Come

Home.