That each should in his house abide,
Therefore was the world so wide.
- Emerson
One of the loves in C.S Lewis’ “The Four Loves” was of country or homeland. He saw such affection rooted in three different ideas. The first was a love of the “Home.” The second and the third were of an ‘attitude to the shared past’ and a ‘sentiment of superiority’ respectively. Lewis rightly condemns the latter two of the ideas, which translate into what in modern terminology is called ethnocentrism or bigotry. The subject of this essay is the first of the loves: that of homeland.
A child is born into a cultural setting at a particular time and place with its myriad traditions and mores. The foremost impression that the child receives is of their immediate surroundings: the lotus, lilies, trees, barren landscapes, and wet fields. These early impressions are solidified by touch. While the French psychologist Jacques Lacan, famous for his “Mirror stage” postulation that a child mistakes their identity for their reflection in a mirror, the core identity starts forming before that. Identity is rooted in these early landscapes. A person’s entire existence is then spent expressing that stream of consciousness they have carried on since childhood. If that postulation contains even a modicum of truth, the tactile experience of immediate surroundings certainly plays a part in building that stream simultaneously as we express ourselves.
The peculiarity of different human experiences is more or less confined to the limited environs of our birthplace. A man born in Montana may feel affection due to reasons of legal or political affiliation for the entire country, but love in its proper definition is bestowed upon his birthplace and its immediate surroundings. The innate love of homeland is one great mystery of human dispositions. I find it an innate quality unique to the individual for the very reason that some people do not have it. It is certainly not given in experience. If it were, two people in the same shared space would have it.
The love for a homeland is only an expression of that innate disposition. This innate quality may have been rooted in a spiritual framework where the entire spectrum of human existence, although dictated by natural laws, has been witness to miracles. Marcel Proust observed that we carry obligations based on kindness and self-sacrifice that don’t have sanction in the present from a different world. When people move away, they often complain that something inexplicable is missing, leaving a quiet remorse in its trail.
To understand that innate pull is to understand the geography that grounded my consciousness. The faintest recollections I gather are of lush green fields with shade as dense as it is comforting. A group of children cavorting about the conflux of furrows between the crops against faint tractor noises in the background evokes the serene presence of nature itself. Unlike space and time, which are dimensions of the human mind, the spirit of nature is outside their pale. The breeze under the canopies is as lovely as ever. People have come and gone. Although the design is not as raw as it once was, the feel is as wild as ever—offering a quiet solitude that no company in the world could parallel. Peace in the heart, peace in the soul.
“Love of homeland is part of faith,” says a famous proverb. Such is my affection for my homeland. The dense canopies of its fields, where crystal-clear water gushes forth from springs against a background of dark, rugged mountains, form a sight forever etched on my heart. The temperate weather—a cool breeze on bright, sunny days—brings to mind the famous dictum from St. Paul, “rejoice evermore.” It is not what you look at but what you see.