I live in a country I love. A country that through it’s stringent laws, and perhaps suffocating tendencies, holds a place I call home.
Home is arguably one of the most common topics we talk about here in our tiny island. After all, it is difficult to find a sense of belonging in a land where your road is laid out on golden linen for you. When you’re so constrained to this place, never experiencing how the other half lives, you can never find freedom that comes with sheer happiness.
But over the years of writing essay after essay about Home, about it being where the heart is, or where you can close the door and feel like you’d opened one instead, I never found out what it truly was.
But not long ago, I did. Unfortunately, I paid the heaviest price for it – my grandmother. With her, I had travelled much of the globe. I watched a purple dinosaur dance on stage, and people drawing with sugar. She was always by my side, and when she left I guess I realised – that she was home because she let me be myself. She let me free and be free. I miss her so much; I miss her presence and her ability to allow me to talk about writing as if I was writing at the moment. I miss the fact that she brought me everywhere and with her I saw what passion for life meant.
Beside her was where I was free. But you need to see the world before you find out about that. You need to find yourself before you can let yourself free. Everyone finds freedom in different places, it could be with someone, or at the top of Mount Fuji. It could be under the Atlantic Ocean or in the oldest car on Earth.
I travelled to china and saw chefs wrap dumplings like they were folding precise origami, I travelled to Bangkok and saw dancers flow as if they were the wind, I travelled to Australia and saw sunsets that were only possible by God’s art. And they were all free. Although the chefs were in a cramped kitchen, and the dancers were on a broken stage, they were free. They were free because they were happy.
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I saw the world, and I saw her, in the places I’ve seen, people I’ve met and songs I’ve heard. Although she left, I will see the rest of the world for her.
I will see the vast oceans, amazing sun rises. The high mountains and the breath taking Northern Lights. I will see the beauty of the world and share the fascinating sight that is freedom. I will find myself and share the rawness of it with everyone I love. I will find a place where I can be as free as I was beside her. And one day, when I meet my grandmother again, I will share with her that I found beauty second only to Hers.
