Non-Fiction Writing

Collective heart

“There’s no place like home” - L. Frank Baum, Wizard of Oz

Home. Literally fitting the definition, “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” Home is where you're from, it’s where you go back to every night. Pairing the old phrase originated by Pliny the Elder, “home is where your heart is”, with the legal definition of home, your house must be where your heart is. I deeply agreed with this before the recent shut down.

Before the spread of COVID-19, when I had to leave somewhere I loved, I considered it my ‘home away from home’. However that mentality makes you understand that I still considered my house my home above all. My house was where I could relax, eat, sleep, have fun, it was a place to release the stress I feel when I step outside. Stress that came from school, social expectations, extra curriculars, and other things that blurred together when I finally was able to go to bed.

What I’m circling back to here is that I never ever considered school ‘home’. It was a workplace. It could be very fun, I got to see friends, but it was far from ‘home’. Walking through the halls often stressed me out because I can get claustrophobic very easily, and school was often not a place to be if I was not having a good day.

All this being said, I was understandably super confused when school was initially shut down and a wave of grief poured over me. In a fit of loneliness I couldn’t figure out why I was so deeply emotional over it. I was still talking to my friends all the time, and that’s what I considered socially necessary out of school. Yet I felt very empty the first week of the shut down. Quickly as the whole world shut off the lights in their shops and put the closed signs in their windows, I started to lose my grasp on everything I thought I knew about my ties to the world. For example, every weekend my family tried to go out and do one fun thing, whether that was going to a restaurant, shopping, or doing some activity. I remember very destinctly as a little kid being upset when we spent our day doing something that was boring to my mind like just walking around a town. I never liked walking around with no destination, because to my mind, there was no payoff. Now with the world on pause, I’ve been left to consider one question; why? I still have everything I thought I needed. I’m home, I can still talk to my friends and I’m still getting an education. Yet, so much is missing, and I couldn’t figure out why.

To understand more, I turned to research. I found an article by Stuart Wolpert from October 10, 2013. He is a UCLA neuroscientist who wrote a paper claiming “Why social connection is as important as food and shelter”. In the text Wolpert has an extremely interesting excerpt that I would rather present in full, and then break it down after:

The importance of social connection is so strong, he writes, that when we are rejected or experience other social "pain," our brains "hurt" in the same way they do when we feel physical pain.

"Social and physical pain are more similar than we imagine," Lieberman said. "We don't expect someone with a broken leg to 'just get over it.' Yet when it comes to the pain of social loss, this is a common — and mistaken — response." (https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/we-are-hard-wired-to-be-social-248746)

When I first read this, something finally started to click for me. Growing up, physical pain is definitely seen as much more serious and ‘real’ compared to mental pain and hurt. We are more prone, as Wolpert said, to tell someone to get over an emotional issue than a physical issue. The reason why this is so prominent in the shutdown is because this ideology is accelerated by the lack of contact, and the main social connection; the internet. With the internet and texting, we lose the ability to read social cues, and lose all ability to hear tone and mood. That isolates us as people because one of our basic tools as a person is communication. Online words can be read in a different manner than originally meant, and the ability to understand each other gets lost behind a screen.

So why does home feel less like home than it ever has even though I’m here more than ever?

Home is where your heart is. I finally figured out what that really means for me. It does still mean family and my house because that is where my heart is, its where love is. But as a collective society, our heart is connection with one another. Its social contact. Being able to see, touch, laugh, hug, smile and be next to someone you haven't seen in awhile. Home is where your heart is. Home is being together. That can be friends laughing, students talking, or strangers waiting for a bus. We as people need to be together. Therefore, when I was feeling empty the first week of quarantine, it was because a piece of my heart and the collective spirit of the people around me had been taken without me or most others knowing. And I hope one day we will be able to restore that piece we lost, and come together with a new sense of connection as people.

“There’s no place like home” - L. Frank Baum, Wizard of Oz