There’s no place like “home.” Change the emphasis, do you hear a difference in the meaning?
I recently started listening to The Midnight Burger, a scripted sci-fi podcast about a Tardis-esque, time-traveling, dimension-defying diner where a group of galactic misfits find meaning in their connection to each other. I once had a “found family” like them and I spent nearly a decade trying to get back to one of them. It took this line, from this strange show, to make me realize what I was actually doing:
“I convinced myself I was trying to find him so that I could make sure he was okay, but that’s not true. I was trying to make it never have happened in the first place.” — Midnight Burger (Season 2, Episode 10)
I wrapped a bow around a person and tied my future and sense of self-worth to the impossible task of bringing them back into my life. But that won’t bring me back to who I was then or protect me from the alienation I feel in their absence.
Earlier on in the show a different character references The Velveteen Rabbit and then describes what sounds like found family to me: “Being human is something that happens to you. And what happens to you is each other. You come to exist in each other.”
Is that where someone finds home? Does it always disappear when they’re gone? Or is there really just no place like home? (did you hear it that time?)
[Music starts from the eco-dystopian opening of WALL-E: “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” — original music & lyrics by Michael Herman with vocals by Michael Crawford from Hello, Dolly! (1994). “Part of Your World (Reprise)” music & lyrics by Alan Menken and Robert Ashman with vocals by Jodi Benson from The Little Mermaid (1989).]