Home is where the heart is … or something like that.
We are told axioms like this over and over until they become more like clichés. But there is still truth to these sayings, but those truths are often more complex than they seem.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. Most of my family lives in Southern California. Some outliers reside in Portland, Tel Aviv, Brooklyn, and Melbourne. I went to college in Rhode Island, and here I sit at my laptop in West Hollywood.
My roommate Pete is from Chicago, and he recently lamented to me his difficulties making friends as an adult. Without college dorms, frats, classes, parties, and lots of free time to grease the wheels of our social lives, we are left feeling a little impotent and dejected in comparison to our social golden era: the teen years.
We go to work, we come home. We make small talk with neighbors, and with strangers at bars. We try to find solace in the fact that we lead global lives now, our hearts are not whole, but splintered, in so many places. We spend our days interacting and connecting with co-workers, loved ones, and potential mates through the magic of the internet. But has something been lost?
I leave for New York City tomorrow on the redeye. Upon arrival I’ll feel the holes in my socks letting in the biting January air, I’ll forget not to smile when a stranger talks to me, I’ll realize what a bargain, and how much space there is in L.A. How many trees, even through this week’s gray rain, I can see the sky.
I will see countless familiar faces there. I will run into college classmates on Eighth Avenue, at parties in Brooklyn, on the train. Is home where the friends are?
In my reality where humans are connected by instant messages, text messages, and the occasional lovely parcel wrapped in brown paper from Providence (one of which I received today), we are thirstier than ever for human connection. I want to be able to tell a joke, make a funny reference, and truly connect- without having to type.
