How do you define a "home"? Is it where you were born? Where you grew up? Where your parents live? Where you are currently living? I don't think there is a single answer to that question. But it surely can't be any of the those for me. I left Iran where I had lived my entire life until 18 where everyone who I had ever known lived. I didn't even look back. I lived in Toronto for 9 years and not a single day did it feel like home to me. That's an awfully long time to feel like you're just passing through. Yet, from the first day I arrived in Berlin, Medellin, or Mexico City, I knew I was home.
If I had to take as pass at it, home to me has been where I felt the most at peace and forged the most meaningful connections. Over the years of living in +15 countries, I have come to realize that home is not a place, but a feeling. "Home" has been where I felt that I belonged. Where I didn't have to pretend to be someone I'm not. Where I found my community of people who gave me that warm fuzzy feeling inside.
I have always been a minimalist at heart. Years ago I watched fight club and these words have stayed with me ever since: "Things you own end up owning you."
Aside from a short stint during the lockdowns when work-from-home became a necessity, I have never owned more than a bed, a desk, a chair, and a laptop. If you had come into my apartment after 5 years of living in Toronto, you would have thought I had just moved in, or maybe I was even squatting. I never cared much for material possessions. In fact, I actively shun anything that ties me down. The freedom to walk away at any moment has been priceless to me.
And walk away I did.
I have been living more or less nomadically for the past 4 years since I left my corporate job in 2021. Seeing no reason to continue living in a city I did not like, I packed up all my belonging into two 70L and 25L backpacks and left. It has been the best years of my life. I own practically nothing aside from my clothes and a few gadgets. I don't have a fancy watch, sports car, or any of the trappings of a "successful" life to show off. And that is exactly how I like it.
It is crazy to feel how liberating it is to not be tied down to any one place. That every day you stay somewhere is a choice and not an obligation. Do I miss having my own bed? If I could have fit it in my backpack, surely I would've taken it with me. That's the cost of having the freedom to chase adventure. One that I am more than willing to pay.
As Anthony Bourdain said: "If you don't risk the bad meal, you never get the magical one."