There is no place like home

"East or West - home is best." Although we all know this proverb, we will never be able to grasp its meaning fully until we go away and start missing.

We are missing the fence surrounding our house; the walls, which we always wanted to repaint a totally different colour; and the dripping tap in the kitchen, which always drove lis crazy while we were trying to fall asleep. We are making numerous phone calls to our mother, who could never understand us, who was intolerant and lacking a sense of humour; whose criticism was unbearable. Now we wish we could just talk to her. We can't stop thinking of the bus stop at which we used to meet our classmates early in the morning. The bus was crowded, the people rude and the weather bad. Now all these nuisances take on a new meaning, new colour, new sense.

Those who have never experienced the feeling of nostalgia, without being able to return, will never show enough appreciation for their hometowns, for their friends, for the special ice-cream at the only cafe in the neighbourhood.

When we are at home, our everyday life smells of dust and stagnation. The list of things we complain about is long: boring daily routine, grumbling parents, dull landscape, and desperate lack of entertainment. And then: there comes a strange moment, when we easily convert dissatisfaction into admiration, criticism into tolerance, resentment into praise.

A longing for the places where we live and where we belong, very well known to most people, makes us change our opinion about certain aspects of our apparently gloomy existence.

We will never understand the influence of the environment in which we were brought up and which moulded our personality until it disappears from our life; perhaps forever.

WHAT IS HOMESICKNESS?

WHEN ARE HOMESICKNESS AND NOSTALGIA CONSTRUCTIVE FEELINGS?

WHAT IS THE BEST REMEDY FOR HOMESICKNESS WHEN YOU HAVE TO STAY AWAY FROM HOME?

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