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29 Mar 10 Caged by circumstances: home as a state of mind
I’ve written before about “home” being a concept, a state of mind rather than a place.
I believe a big cause of people feeling “rootless”, like they don’t belong is due to them not being where they want to be. People will often associate these feelings with “being homesick” (if they have just moved), or not liking the place they are in, but I don’t think that gives the full picture.
Quite often people will be in places, homes, jobs, relationships they don’t really want to be in. A natural reaction for a human being at being forced into a situation is to reject it, either physically or mentally. If we are forced to commute to jobs we don’t enjoy, we will start disliking the whole surrounding that we associate with the situation.
Feeling “out of place”, not belonging, yearning to be somewhere else is a natural reaction to being stuck somewhere out of necessity rather than choice. But it’s important to realise that when someone feels that way, it’s not necessarily the place itself that is the culprit to the negative feelings or want to be somewhere else. It’s the situation itself: the forced nature of it and the perceived sense of not having a choice in the matter.
People that are “caged” by circumstances will act very much like any other caged animal: they will become aggressive, lash out, become depressive, start rejecting their environment and eventually their own lives. Counteract what is causing the sense of being caged, and you can view a situation with a lot more sobriety.
