This month I am about to become a New Zealand citizen and I feel pretty lucky. After a decade of calling Aotearoa home I’m becoming an official kiwi – much to my Dad’s dismay. A staunch British man who’s never left his own country he’s horrified I would cast aside my nationality and disown my heritage to ‘switch sides’.
The thing is home has never been a place for me and certainly wasn’t something I connect to the place I was born. In fact if anything here is where I really became me so in fact the me you know today was born (or reborn) here. You see for me home is not about a place. It’s more soul than soil, it’s what we carry within us and the feeling of belonging we experience. It’s who I’m with, the life I have and the person I am when I’m there. This defines home and it’s much more of a feeling than a place could ever articulate.
Now more than after following Covid-19 am I pleased to call NZ home. We are so lucky to have what we have. When I look at the way the rest of the world has been impacted by covid-19, the governments that have managed it (or mis managed it), the way people have reacted and the consequential futures that now present in those countries I am forever grateful to be here. Summed up best by the various slogans each government chose to adopt as we navigated covid-19. This road sign near my house in Wellington mirrored across the country on signs, government briefings and the way in which people treated each other ‘Stay Calm, Be Kind’.
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now. Don’t get me wrong, I love and miss my family tremendously, they are always part of my feeling of home but whenever I return to visit England, I realise I love where I am. I love my life, I love the people I surround myself with each day, I love the laid back, friendly, no stress attitudes, the wide green open spaces, I love our team of 5 million and the population we have that strikes the balance between economy without crowding. No queue or commuting jams, no overfilled hospitals, classrooms, no 3 week wait for the doctor. Yes there’s room for improvement, isn’t their always but we’re also one of the luckiest countries on the planet.
Most of all I love the person I am when I’m here and who I’ve become on the and of the long white cloud.