Home is that safe haven to which you can always come back to at the end of the day. You can take on the whole world because no matter how things turn out, at the end of the day, there will always be Home. Even for someone who lives alone, there’s bound to be a place they call Home. It’s about the smaller and bigger things that grant us comfort and a sense of some constancy, when all else keeps moving relentlessly. Among many other things different people would prefer to talk about, it’s also about semiotics. The meaning we give to things and which tends to grow with familiarity.

Coming back home at the end of each day feels safe and warm but it also makes us less appreciative of these smaller and bigger things. And when monotony sets in too deep, some may come to even underappreciate the people who stand beside them as part of their Home. But when you spend more time than usual away, you have a chance to become much more acute about the people and the things that make up a home. This was the opportunity I sensed before me as I left home on May 5, only to come back at the end of the month.

After a little while, the longing for Home makes you project the memories of what you know in all the foreign places you meet. My body became in charge, looking for some sign of familiarity in all the new environments that kept coming before me. Constantly torn between throwing myself at all the new experiences ahead, and the search for more familiar grounds on which to safely step upon. The pinnacle of this dialectic (the tension in between) came to be when Rob Long took me to visit a cork plantation around Canberra. Cork has been for many centuries, one of the outstanding industries of Portugal and cork trees produce a unique and familiar landscape. The idea of finding such a landscape in the opposite side of the planet awakened a strange sense of curiosity. But I could never be prepared for what I was to experience. Full blown and vivid experiences of “back home” came rushing in, as my rationality struggled to keep me aware of the alienness I was in. If I were to awake in those woods with no previous recollection, perhaps the only thing that would tell it out, would be the sounds of unfamiliar birds. Even the skilful cut of the tree’s bark resonated of my culture and traditions. And yet, nothing about that place was known to me.

Looking back now, I came to realise that all of these powerful dialectics (and many other) are a constant pulling force. Life requires as much effort to keep up, than to slow down and experience the familiarity that emerges again and again from the everyday new. Novelty and change can only be truly experienced in contrast with the familiar. Ask yourself: how capable are you to perceive changes in your everyday work? In your family and friends? In yourself?

How often do we see accident investigations coming down to things like “lack of situational awareness”, without ever declaring what exactly is meant by such a vague expression. Often the familiar blinds us from sensing the lurking surprises. But we can never appreciate a surprise without first appreciating what makes us feel safe and comfortable. Risk intelligence emerges from asking: What makes us confident in the face of high risk work, if not the familiarity that comes with experience? Conversely, what surprises us or makes us suspicious, if not what suddenly falls out of familiarity?

If you are interested, a Portuguese version of this story is available here: https://novellus.solutions/insights/sentir-se-em-casa-longe-de-casa/

While English has come to dominate my work life for many years, I felt the need to share some of my recent personal shift with those with whom I also share a more common language. And you would not believe the challenges of what I initially thought would be a simple matter of translation…