R: You Can't Go Home Again

Many different paths lead us to New Haven this weekend, and we come from many geographic and cultural backgrounds.

We will have traveled from far and wide, across mountains and rivers and oceans, to reunite with steadfast friends, engage in lively colloquy, and sing the old familiar songs. After the festivities end, we all go home again—but to where?

Both literally and metaphorically, we have all taken a journey away from home. At one time or another, we left our hometowns behind in favor of Yale and the ivory tower. Whether we desired it or not, we gained “elite” status in the eyes of many, and were accepted into the upper echelon of society. No doubt, many of us are glad we made this choice. Yale offered us vocational opportunities that might otherwise have been out of reach. Here in New Haven, we banded together as Federalists, forging an intellectual community that now celebrates its twelfth year. But in choosing one path, we rejected another.

When we left home and came to Yale, we sacrificed a part of ourselves. We began to pull up our roots, and something died in the process. Finding it impossible to live in both worlds at the same time, to what extent must we abandon our obligations to the place in which we were raised? We left something behind when we left home. Can we ever reclaim our inheritance? When we departed our hometowns to climb the ivory tower, did we leave for good? Or can we return, older, wiser, and more certain in our sense of belonging?

There is a difference between being from some place and being of that place, between growing up in a culture and belonging to that culture. Sometimes we might feel like cultural nomads, wavering between two identities but rejected by both. Where do we belong now? How do we reconcile our conflicting loyalties? More broadly, the same question could be asked of immigrants, cultural transplants, and other sorts of ideological converts. Can a boy from rural Texas move to New York and remain a Texan? If not, can he ever really be a New Yorker?

This may be a case where, the further we journey from home, the more we become strangers to it. Or perhaps the truth is quite the opposite—that we can only really go home after we have seen it from a distance.