Home is where my hat hangs. I have said this many times to the eternal question of where is home, as I have criss-crossed over Australia for work and leisure and now living in Cambodia since 2005. The idea of home was so simple when younger. Where ever I had my meager belongings, including the above quoted hats, was home. I had no ongoing connection to the country town where I completed my schooling due to family breakup and the eventual relocation of both parents. Conveniently they ended up only 3 hours apart on either side of Sydney so over the years I have got to know Sydney as I visit, individually, family. Having never lived in or near Sydney though, it’s not in anyway ‘home’.
The last two times I have visited Australia I lived in a remote Cambodian province that was far from the bustling modern Asian capital of Phnom Penh. Far away physically and culturally from fast internet, bookstores, daily newspapers and groceries I immediately loved the remote location and in 3 years my happiness and sense of ‘home’ only grew. It was definitely and easily where my hat was hanging!
Then the change in where and what was home, as I acknowledged it was time to move on, took place. The change was due to wanting new work challenges and time for cosmopolitan distractions such as art galleries, opportunity for making new friends, options for exercise and a fast variety of food.
But now 3 months after the relocation to Phnom Penh where is home? My hat is hanging in a charming, homely and secure apartment in inner city. Yet is it home? Its not home in the simplified way that Ratanakiri was immediately and absolutely home. Now I confuse myself, as I vaguely think of home as Ratanakiri. It’s vague they as I not really believe its home. It’s where I felt at home but already the town has moved on without me and it’s no longer where my hat hangs. Physically I am here in the city but I feel like a long-term visitor.
How complicated when I also think of Australia as home. My hat is not hanging there?! I will visit there for 6 half weeks in the southern hemisphere spring and I am really looking forward to it. Will it be home? It will be emotionally wonderful to be in Australia but intellectually distressing as I try not to take the materialism and bureaucracy as criminal behaviour by compatriots! Aaaaaggh, where is home! I panic at times? Have I lost home?
It’s complicated now. I liked the simplified time of having the ‘where my hat was hanging’ definition. What has happened to that sense of space and place as I get older? There was no agonizing over definitions of home in my 20s or early 30s.
Very traditional Buddhism believes that if we move too fast and too many times, our spirit will lose itself as it moves slower than our physical body. Such a concept might suitably be used to guess that my spirit is still making it way down along the Mekong River, as it leaves our northern home of Ratanakiri. By the time my spirit rejoins myself, maybe I will know where the hat is hanging.
