Have you ever felt this strong longing for the people and places you call “home” when they are too far away and seem out of reach? Have you ever experienced this deep yearning to explore the far-away and unknown when you feel stuck in your routines and a change of scenery seems like the only remedy? In the German language, there is a very peculiar pair of words that describes these two feelings: “Heimweh” and “Fernweh”. These two words are in fact so unique that they can be translated to English only inaccurately. While “Heimweh” means the longing for home described above and therefore resembles “homesickness”, “Fernweh” as “Heimweh”`s opposite, thus the ache for the far-away and unknown, lacks an English counterpart. Despite having opposing meanings, in reality, these two emotions work closely together.

It does not matter if the strong yearning to explore a new community, a different way of life, and a completely different culture is the first to kick in or if the intense longing for your home, all the familiar places and beloved people takes effect beforehand. Either way, we can be sure that wherever “Fernweh” is around, “Heimweh” is never too far away and the other way around. Hence, “Heimweh” and “Fernweh” can turn our lives easily into an emotional roller-coaster ride. Only after a closer look at the layers beneath and interconnections between those two emotions, their essential meaning and core importance come to light.

When regarding homesickness, the most apparent reason for this feeling is the felt distance from home, that is to say the people, places and things, constituting it. But on closer inspection, the actual source of “Heimweh” reveals itself to be the big step we take out of our comfort zones whenever leaving home. By bringing physical distance between ourselves and the people we are sure to always be able to rely on, the streets we know to navigate blindly, and the things that became essential parts of our haven, we are giving up on parts of the security and safety they have come to mean for us. Even more so, we are giving up on the part of our very own identity that was not only formed by but is deeply ingrained into this complex entity called so simply “home”. At home, we do not need to explain certain things about ourselves. At home, we are easily understood and can easily understand. At home, we have our own place in the greater framework of the world. At home, we belong. Where we are, with whom we are and by what we are surrounded is an essential pillar for our sense of self. When leaving home, this sense of self gets easily distorted, leaving us behind with the feeling of “Heimweh”.

Following this understanding of “Heimweh”, “Fernweh” does in fact not work as its opposite but rather its counterpart. Like the second side to a coin, the deeper reasons beneath the feeling of “Fernweh” are in their core connected to identity. The longing to break out of the known and delve into the big, wide world is obviously a consequence of our need for new impressions. It is rooted in our childlike curiosity for everything new and our very adult feeling of being stuck. It is driven by our desire to live new experiences and to leave our from-time-to-time tiring everyday life behind. Consequently, “Fernweh” is the call of our need for change – change that cannot happen when it is too easy to hide behind the safety and security of home. When our inner change and the change of the outer world are incongruent, “Fernweh” lets us feel the drive to set sails to unknown shores. At unknown shores, everything is not only unfamiliar for us, but we are unfamiliar for everybody and everything. In order to be able to evolve and let change happen, we need to embrace the sides of our identity that had not yet had the opportunity to get formed and explored. So, in the distance, we can find a new sense of self.

Putting these single pieces of analysing “Heimweh” and “Fernweh” together to create a greater, more general picture of their interconnection, it becomes evident that they are more than the mere feelings that make us explore the world and return home. Most importantly, “Heimweh” and “Fernweh” exemplify how life, or the quest for who we are, is deeply rooted in the axes between change and stability as well as between the appeal of the future and the appeal of the past. Upon closer inspection, “Heimweh” is the longing for the person we were and the life we had as this person in the past. In contrast, “Fernweh” reveals itself to be the urge to chase the person we could become and the life we could have in the future. The emotional rollercoaster of these two sentiments runs between the glowing beauty of the familiar, the stability of our home, of the past on the one side, and the thrilling prospects of the unfamiliar, the change of the distance, of our future, on the other side.

When trying to resolve this paradox of so closely related feelings indicating such opposing calls of action, the only solution comes down to one single realisation: Sometimes we need to first lose something to be able to find it again. Despite inhering almost overly basic logic as a theoretical statement, it is a challenge of its own kind to apply this realisation to reality, especially when regarding “Heimweh” and “Fernweh”. Aligning this realisation with these two emotions, we need to conclude that sometimes it is necessary to let go of the stability of our home, in order to gain a new sense of stability in another environment that bears the potential to be our future. Equally, we need to conclude that sometimes, we need to let go of the thrill of the change, the endless prospects of the future to make one of the futures our prospective pasts.

In the end, “Heimweh” and “Fernweh” are not merely confusing and complicated emotions but rather valuable companions that offer much-needed guidance through life. They help us to get lost, to lose ourselves, in order to be able to find us again.

Sophia Abegg