So where exactly IS home?

"So little yet so much one knows
Like a frog which grows in a
puddle
Knowing not oceans so ever vast
Becomes befuddled by its small
...world."

Classic Thai poetry translated Seni Pramoj

I started globetrotting the day I was conceived in Tangiers, Morocco. And for well over half a century I haven't stopped. 

I was born and raised in Europe, shuttling between winters in the chilly north and summers in the south in search of warmer climes. By blood I am Dutch, French, Corsican, Polish and Russian. By temperament, depends on whom you ask.

When I was 12, my family moved to Canada, where I got a solid education despite a half-dozen cross-country moves over the next 18 years. Holidays took me coast to coast and down most of the continent all the way to Panama, always by car. 

In 1985 I was lured to Asia, and I lived and worked and loved there for just two years shy of three decades. At the start of 2013, I moved to Moldova to launch a start-up to market test an innovative business model I collaborated to develop. After five years, I returned to Manila. And again five years later I returned to Canada. For both work and pleasure I continue to travel around the globe.

All this travel has shaped who I am. The exposure to different nations, cultures, ideas and peoples has increased my tolerance for diversity and broadened my worldview. My adventures have stretched my comfort zone. I can say I was a global citizen long before the term became fashionable. 

So, you might ask, where is home? For Robert Frost, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.”  I'm not sure that is enough; I have two passports, Dutch and Canadian, and I suppose that means they'd have to take me in.  

It matters to me where I chose to create my nest, my refuge from the world, and for the longest time, that was Manila, despite the interlude in Moldova. How I arrived there is a very long story, perhaps beyond my personal one, linking to a multi-generational family history of migration. And there are countless reasons I stayed, not least because of friendships forged, ties that beautifully bind.

Still, I am often on the move, scratching my forever itchy feet, always the outsider, my heartstrings connected to so many people and, by extension, places, and thus, while at ease anywhere, I am now truly at home only in my own skin and in the arms of my soul-mate, a Chinese-born Canadian, wherever we may be.

My photo blog is a journey of sharing, what I see, what I think... and I warmly welcome you to view through my lens and join the conversation.
 

"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision
for the limits of the world. "

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 - 1860)