Home Is

#232: Where the Heart Is

When I was in 6th grade, we had to make this cheesy music video about a song that had meaning to us. The girl in our group who had the best voice chose "Home is Where the Heart Is." I was supposed to be some back-up singer so out of that whole experience, I retained memories of walking dramatically from Bohol house to Vigan house in Nayong Filipino while wailing, "Hoooooo-oooome is where the heart is... Home is where the heart i-hiiiss.... Ooooo, hooooo-ooome is where the heart is... home is where the heart is..." Not a stellar video as you could imagine.

As frustration was starting to build up over the absurdly long readings being required by one of my courses, the apathy being displayed by my group for a paper due this Friday, the stubbornness of one of members of yet another team (this girl doesn't smile and shifts from looking at me blankly, to looking at me in a measuring way, to looking at me with condescension - all within 3 seconds), and the sorry state of my life in this dorm (along with a very unsanitary flatmate), the key thought that kept on ringing in my head was "I want to go home." I can't wait to go home. If I can, I will go home now.

Thinking about it more, it seems like all I'm really saying is that I want to get out of this place. Now. I started by counting the days till Sydney but then it took too long to go from 80 days to less than 50 so I re-framed my countdown by looking at the time I'll get to Manila. But then, even that seemed long so I changed it to days till I leave Illinois. As of today, I have 30 days till I head back to San Francisco to see my brother and Ninang for a week before I fly to Manila. And that is a comforting thought.

See, Illinois is not that bad. It can actually be pretty - especially now that spring is in full bloom and there are blossoms and leaves where there was only brown dead stuff a month ago. I've met some nice people - fellow exchange students, fellow Filipinos and fellow Christians from Evanston Bible Fellowship. I've taken part in some fun activities. There have been moments that I've truly and sincerely enjoyed. But they cannot offset the displacement I feel.

Sometimes I wonder if it's merely a matter of effort. I can actually ditch my readings and have a bit more fun. (All my subjects here are after all counted as pass/fail in Australia.) But I can't bring myself to turn in shabby work. I'm not a perfectionist (because I don't pursue perfection) but I doggedly pursue excellence. And given that my purpose in coming over here is to study, I can't de-prioritize that to elevate my social state. Come to think of it, studying has actually become a good excuse to avoid situations where I'd have to give the same shallow introduction of myself over and over to different people I might never even see again anyway. "Hi, I'm Gladys, exchange student from Australia but originally from the Philippines. You?"

Truth is, I think it's a matter of heart. Jim Elliot said, "Wherever you are, be all there." I don't know if I'm able to do that under my current circumstances. I can't be "all here" when my heart is somewhere else. The past year or so, I've been leaving people I love to live in different places. How much displacement can a heart take?

I thought I would love Kellogg more. It is after all the mecca of the study of branding. But while the classes are brilliant and the learning doesn't disappoint, the experience seems to fall short. I even question my love for branding now. I used to be passionate about it - accumulating books, talking about it like it was some noble cause to anyone who would willingly listen. I don't know if I'm just going through a phase but it doesn't appeal to me so much now. Not when people around me talk about it all the time while all I really want to hear is "Welcome back baby!" above the buzz at Sydney airport on the 30th of June.

This is not home. 11 weeks here would never have made it home. Not even close. Not even with the presence of things I once thought I loved. Home is how that cheesy 6th grade song defined it. Home is where the heart is - be it in California with my brother & relatives, in Manila with my parents and friends... or in Sydney where my beloved is.