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I like to think that people have an innate sense of place. You can't help forming emotional ties to a place where you've grown up, experienced life, made friends and family and that's a wonderful thing. It feels right to be connected to a place. A sense of belonging is incredibly natural, and lacking that can be difficult. Unfortunately, it seems to me that it's becoming rarer these days.

I think that a lot of that feeling can come down to knowing people in an area. Having people to spend time with, people who you've grown up with or made memories with; as they say, home is where the heart is. If you spend a long time in a place without making any of these connections, there are few feelings more isolating and lonely. Without having a strong support system it'll be much harder to get that belonging.

Still, though, it's not entirely about people. Just the act of living in a place and inhabiting that place creates thousands of small connections and memories. Doing that in the same place for years or decades or an entire lifetime can instill a powerful sense of belonging and feel right. Knowing the geography like the back of your own hand, or having memories and histories with all the locations you see in your day to day life.

Of course, a lot of this is kind of conjecture. I haven't exactly stayed still for most of my life. The longest I really spent in one place is around 5 years, which might seem like a lot when you think of it as 20% of my life so far. It's not that much, however, when you compare to other people who literally spend entire lifetimes in one place. More than that even, there are places where entire bloodlines have settled in, containing history and personal stories that go back generations. Unfortunately, I'd imagine the latter is less common thse days.

There's so much human migration that happens for economic and political reasons I think it's hard to imagine a world where that is not the case. I guess it's especially hard because when people have the means to pursue a better (richer) life, it's difficult to consider why anyone would choose differently. Does it really seem realistic for someone to be born somewhere and then stay in that spot for their entire lives, especially in the modern world?

Maybe it would seem more realistic if it was more normalized to me. However, my family, like most Pakistani families I've met in the west, has a long history of migration. So much so that it feels incredibly natural to keep moving around.

My parents came to Canada for economic reasons, seeking education and jobs. Even before that, though, both of them had moved around a whole lot in their own childhoods. To see why, we have to go back to both of my pairs of grandparents. Both of them had fancy jobs that took them all over the world, even over fifty years ago they were quite cosmopolitan. Then of course, in this time there was the infamous partition which must have permanently implanted a familiarity with economic migration. When the stability that you're used to is so feeble, why not seize any and all opportunity the moment you can?

I'm not sure what the situation was like for my great grandparents. I suspect that if we go back far enough we'll eventually get to the the point where people were born, lived, and died all in one area but I'm not sure how far that would be. The subcontinent has been quite a happening place for quite a long time, and if we extrapolate backwards I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of my ancestors were some kind of upper middle class tradespeople or bureaucrats that had the opportunity to travel.

Anyways, it feels like this willingness to follow opportunity must have pretty deep roots, and I suspect there's many many people who are in the same boat. Not just from South Asia, but the waves of settlers to North America are a who's who of people fleeing or seeking something, who must now be much more comfortable with the idea of continuing to move. It's funny; when I think of the term "third-culture kid" it feels pretty modern, but I guess the idea must have applied to plenty of people throughout history.

I don't think there's anything wrong with fleeing persecution or seeking opportunity either; who wouldn't do the same in those situations? I guess part of what I feel is that maybe there's something important, some meaning and value in having deep, familial ties to a place that we no longer know. This is all just some very vague feeling that maybe we've forgotten what it feels like and the rightful feeling of knowing that you belong to a place just as much as that place belongs to you.

I read stories sometimes about the poor or displaced who obviously value their place far more than I do. Sometimes I catch myself wondering what's the problem? Why not leave, flee, flock to greener pastures? But of course, to be so connected to a homeland is an incredibly meaningful thing and not something that can be replaced. This is true for people all over the world, from dying factory towns in America to persecuted villages in Africa.

I think if I grew up in one place, spent my entire life there, raised my kids there and grew old there, it would be incredibly meaningful to me. I think it would be cool to experience that, but it would necessarily mean losing so much of what I've gained by being such a world traveler. If I had to decide right now which is a better childhood to grant my children, I'm not sure I'd be able to easily decide. Maybe I'll have to ask more people who've experienced both options and see what they think.