Nostalgia for a Happy Home

KOMPAS/PRIYOMBODO

Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo, the Archbishop of Jakarta, receives representatives of Yudi Latif’s Love the Nation Society after Christmas Mass on Wednesday (25/12/2019) at Jakarta Cathedral in Central Jakarta. The congregation extended their welcome to members of the local interfaith community at the cathedral on Christmas Day.

Every Christmas and New Year, there is a longing to go “home”. It is not a sentimental craze but an existential call. Living things do indeed suffer from a kind of incurable disease to return to their original home or find a new one where hopes for the future can hatch and grow. It is called nostalgia, from the Greek words nostos (homesickness) and algos (pain).

After wandering for thousands of miles, turtles and birds return to their place of birth to lay their eggs in the place where their lives first began. For humans, the notion of returning home does not have to include returning to the same point on earth. To borrow a phrase from Shoshana Zuboff, "Home is a place where we can know and be known, love and be loved. The home is the ability to master, the warmth of the conversation, the closeness of relationships, the peace of the guesthouse, the space to develop, take shelter and hope."