If I tried to explain everything, I couldn’t.. Lately, there has been a stream of clichés running through my mind.
I can’t seem to untangle anything long enough to put it into words. Very few things can help in a moment like this. Among them are: a large cup of bitter coffee and a little “Vienna.”
Mr. Billy Joel always finds gentle, clear ways to tell us truths: “Slow down, you’re doing fine. You can’t be everything you want to be before your time although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight.”
Throughout the past six months I’ve lived in three different countries, so I guess I know a little about borderlines. I’m returning to one of my favorite themes: cultural borders. These entail not the simple food, language, customs and traditions of living in any country, but rather the deep historical and political circumstances that have left imprints on the mentality and consciousness of a people.
I think this is what really differentiates us. Otherwise, we are so similar in so many respects. We are similar in likes and dislikes, we are similar in love and hate, and we are similar in hopes and dreams.
But these things are clichés and I’d like to stray from them as much as possible. It is incredible that I can live in Spain and find someone and who has grown up under completely different circumstances, yet who still shares my views and opinions. It is incredible that I can live in Bulgaria and find someone who loves Billy Joel just as much as I do.
I don’t know if this is due to the general similarities among people or to globalization, but I have found that a person can always find some way to feel at home, no matter where he or she is. This is because you never know who you will meet, who will surprise you, and who will make you think more, want more and try harder. You never know who will change you, no matter where they are from and how different they are from you.
In “You’re My Home,” Billy Joel explains it much better than I could, and in much fewer words: “When you look into my eyes and see the crazy gypsy in my soul, it always comes as a surprise when I feel my withered roots begin to grow.”
Home is, at times, a fluid concept. Home is who you are with and who you love, not so much where you are.
Above all, I want to express gratitude toward all of the people in the US, Spain and Bulgaria, gratitude for their care and help during these past six months I’ve spent moving and trying to find that feeling of home. I also want to remind you to never close your mind to different people and different cultures, because if I know one thing in this world for sure, it is that you never know when you will meet someone who will change your life.
Dorotea Lechikova is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
