It’s been a summer of staying close to home for me. Most years, I’ve yearned to get out of town, to travel and to visit new sites, and enjoy new experiences with a variety of people. This summer is the exception. There are such threatening and unnerving events happening around the world that the farthest I’ve consented to go is to visit good friends at their cottage in Eastern Ontario, driving from my home in Oakville. Otherwise, I’m staying put, safely planted in my small community, hovering between Lake Ontario and the QEW highway.
I’ve never been an inveterate traveler, always thinking twice, three times, and often more about travelling outside Canada. Perhaps it’s my immigrant parents who clung to Canada after arriving from Europe under harrowing circumstances, who remind me to be cautious. The farthest they travelled was to winter vacations in California or Florida. Trips they planned to Europe were made and then cancelled.
Why Staying Close to Home Feels More Important Than Ever
Today, the number of Canadians travelling across the border to the U.S. has dwindled considerably. We’re a cautious lot, and news reports of being stopped at border crossings certainly drain my enthusiasm for exploring new destinations south of the border. These days, I’m finding that I prefer to stick close to home. It’s my happy place.
Home has always been a comfort to me, yet lately that “homebody” feeling has grown exponentially. While the world is engulfed in turmoil, fighting wars and enduring unpredictable economic turbulence, being home feels like precisely the right place to be.
Of course, our habits change as we age and what makes us happy changes too. We are different at 40 than we were at 20, different again at 60 than we were at 40, and different once more at 80 than we were at 60. As I grow older, I find that sticking close to home and community is one of the central pillars of my confidence and my happiness.
Loneliness, Belonging, and the Search for Happiness at Home
At a recent Aspen Ideas Festival, Canadian-American columnist and author David Brooks and Harvard Law School professor Adam Sandel spoke about “The Ancient Art of Being Human: Self, Society and the Good Life.” From time to time, I suspect most everyone asks themselves if they are living the good life. Sadly, in the U.S., the percentage of those reporting loneliness rose during COVID, then decreased for a short period after, and is now rising again – as is the percentage of those who report being unhappy.
Adam Sandel believes the basis of our discontent, or what makes us unhappy, is that we are fixated on goals, striving for the latest achievement, only to find that achievement ultimately empty. David Brooks argues that there are six desires in life: belonging or friendship, understanding, respect, recognition, enjoyment, and meaning or finding life’s purpose. Brooks also stresses that the number of Americans who report feeling lonely has increased by 50 percent since 2000.
Connecting with Family and Community Through Shared Experiences
I think that’s why I prefer to stay close to home and to those I love and admire. Not only is my family nearby, but my friends, old and new, who fill my life with joy and understanding, are within an hour’s drive. My daughter and her partner live close by. Former colleagues also reside nearby, and the world of books and magazines that keeps my mind and pocketbook active is a short drive down the highway to Toronto.
My trips for this summer, if you can call them that, include two jaunts to the Stratford Festival. In July, my daughter and I saw Anne of Green Gables, and I can’t imagine a happier day than the one I spent with her. Not only is the Stratford Festival a short drive from Oakville, but the play and its marvelous characters touched my heart.
Finding Joy and Purpose Without Traveling Far
The Stratford play (the hit of this season) is based on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s timeless tale of imagination, resilience, and the transformative power of love. For those who’ve read the Anne of Green Gables (and Emily of New Moon) books as children and adolescents, the play is not only a trip down memory lane but also a reconnection with the feelings that drove our emotions at a young age. This Canadian story is about home and belonging, understanding, recognition, enjoyment, and finding life’s purpose — the exact qualities that David Brooks describes during his talk in Aspen, only with a quintessentially Canadian homespun spin.
My daughter and I sat together, enchanted by the play, by the acting, and by the very fact that although we read the Anne of Green Gables books decades apart, the feelings we experienced in the theatre that summer afternoon in late July were the same. This shared experience brought us closer together than we have felt in some time.
You could say we travelled quite a distance that afternoon, watching the actors who transported us to Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, and to the farmhouse of Matthew and Marilla, an older brother and sister, who find their loneliness disappearing as does Anne, as they become a family – staying close to home and cherishing every minute of it.
